Synchronized Souls
by XiaoWeiXiao
Summary: A new pair of students shows up at the DWMA, bringing with them a very unique set of abilities. Tsubaki gets attracted to one of them, feeling that he's the one for her. A new threat appears, threatening not only the school, but the world as well. How will our group fare? (I feel like this is a terrible summary)
1. Chapter 1

**Note:**

**This is my very first attempt at a fanfic, so prepare for a bunch of things ranging from terrible writing to unintelligible brain blocks. I have no idea whether or not I'll finish this so brace for anything.**

**Please R&R.**

**And whatever criticism you have, I probably deserve.**

The day started out like any other, which honestly is kind of surprising. I mean, after everything that happened, with the Kishin Asura and all, you would think that normal would be hard to come by.

But here the students were, sitting in a classroom once again. Almost as if nothing had changed, as if the world hadn't almost been on the brink of falling into madness.

It'd been months since the Asura's destruction and everything felt like it was going back to normal. After rebuilding the whole of Death City and moving it back to where it was before, the first thing Lord Death decided to do was get the school up and running again. According to him, it would bring back a sense of normalcy into their lives. Well, about as normal as a school dedicated to training weapons and meisters could be. But like any normal school, there were the enthusiastic students, and there were the not-so-enthusiastic ones.

One student of the latter category was Soul Evans. As he opened his eyes from his nap, he wondered once again why he was in school early. It only took one look at his meister to remember why. Maka, being of the former category, had wanted to get to school early the first day class went back into regular session. And as they travelled from place to place together, it was to the misfortune of Soul that he happened to get dragged along with her to school a good thirty minutes early.

Maka on the other hand, was ecstatic at the idea of going back to school. After all of the inconveniences that had happened with all the recent events, the idea that they could get back into a life of (not really) normalcy had her all pumped up to get back into it early. With a few slight changes, she noted with as Death the Kid and his weapons Liz and Patty walked into the classroom.

Being a shinigami, Kid didn't necessarily need to go to DWMA. However, he had insisted that he be put into the school to better understand the meisters and how they worked. Deep down though, it really started out with the fact that he saw Maka and Black*Star's teams getting beat down by Stein. For some reason, he felt the need to go help them out, as it felt like they were being given a remedial class that was far out of their control. As such, he enrolled as a student. Maka had only heard about this months later, when she was dragged by Liz, Patty, and Tsubaki for a girl's night out.

Despite all the intention he had of helping, he was stopped short by his ultimate weakeness: OCD. Being a symmetry-obsessed OCD freak came with its ups and downs, as was clearly shown when he couldn't bring himself to go help when he felt something was wrong with the house. All the same, that was in the past now. After an eventful first day of school, Kid, Liz and Patty were now students at the academy. Liz and Patty were happy to have a chance to go to school, and Kid could appreciate his other obsession a little more.

As Kid and his weapons walked up to their seats, Kid glanced at Soul with a raised eyebrow. "Never took you for one to get to class early."

While Soul had matured greatly ever since the whole Kishin situation occurred, he was still somewhat of a slacker when it came to school stuff, so the idea that he would get to school early was still a foreign one that Kid was unfamiliar with.

Soul groaned and planted his face into the table. "When you're partners with the one meister who gets disappointed when school's cancelled, you tend to have to deal with stupid, uncool things like getting to school- "

"MAKA CHOP!"

"… early." Soul finished as his face got planted into the table by one of Maka's deadly book smashes.

Kid only smiled at this. He always found it somewhat amusing when Soul or Black*Star found themselves victims of Maka's book assaults. The action itself was adorable coming from Maka and it always shut up people like Black*Star and Soul whenever they were being annoying for stupid reasons. At the same time though, Kid had to wonder. How had Soul survived the Maka chops all of these years? He had seen some of the chops go almost completely through a person's head and to this day wondered why Maka didn't use her chop whenever they went on missions.

That aside though, another matter popped up in Kid's head.

"Did you hear about the new students coming in?" he asked.

Maka, Soul, Liz and Patty all turned towards Kid with a questioning look on their faces. Maka spoke first. "All I heard was that there were new students coming in. Did you hear anything else Kid?" At this, Kid frowned. His father had taken Kid to the side a couple of days back to talk about the new students coming in, telling him that apparently they were specially gifted as students.

Before he could start talking about it, the rest of the class began to file in, including the rest of their resonance team. Kid often had to wonder about Black*Star and Tsubaki. On the surface, the meister/weapon team didn't really seem like a great fit, with Black*Star always doing stupid things and Tsubaki was the motherly figure trying to get him out of trouble. However, beneath that there was a connection between the two of trust, being able to understand each other and trust each other in tough situations.

As the rest of the class filed in, Professor Stein rolled in on his chair.

"Alright class, before we start today, we have two students that are coming in later in the week from an academy that was recently established in Washington. As the strongest pair from that school, we're letting one weapon/meister team fight them on their first day. Mifune has agreed to oversee the match."

At this statement, the students began muttering among themselves, figuring out who would be willing to take on this challenge. Before anyone could say anything though, a loud voice spoke up.

"Professor! Let me and Tsubaki handle this. We'll show them our godly power."

The rest of Black*Star's resonance team figured that if anyone was going to take on this challenge, it would be him. Maka never liked leaving bad impressions to new students on her first day and Kid was more or less just interested in seeing what kind of team these new students were going to be.

-Line Break-

"Hey, did you hear?"

"Yeah, they're making us fight one of their teams on the first day."

"Sound like it'll be fun."

"I just hope we're not fighting the shinigami that's attending their school. Last thing I want to fight is someone of a god-caliber."

"But that pretty much describes us."

"Oh shut it. You know that's not true."

"Yeah I know, we'd probably get smashed."

The weapon-meister pair continued to bicker as they took the train to the DWMA, getting ready to start their new life at a different school.

/

**Also, someone give me a good title. I have absolutely no idea what I should do for a title. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Note:**

**So yeah, Chapter 2. Not sure how this'll go. I completely expect myself to fail spectacularly in any/every way. **

As the week passed by, Black*Star and Tsubaki could be found sparring with Kid and the Thompson sisters after school in an attempt to get stronger. While most people doubted that Black*Star really needed the practice, seeing as he was a part of the resonance team that fought Asura, Black*Star and Tsubaki had the feeling that the new students that were coming were much stronger than anyone thought. To them, something about this upcoming fight felt different. They weren't sure what it was though. One of their training days, Maka and Soul decided to join in to get some practice. When they decided to take a break, Maka started talking with them.

"Don't you think you might be taking this a little too seriously?" Maka began, "For all we know, the strongest that they could be might just be at around the strength of someone like Kilik. And fighting Kilik doesn't warrant this much practice."

Black*Star glanced over at Maka for a few seconds. "Maka, I'm not training for the upcoming fight. I'm training so that one day I'll surpass Kid in every single way possible.

Kid frowned. It didn't seem like Black*Star to be so calm and quiet about it. He figured that if anything, Black*Star was going to be the loud and vocal person that he always was. "So what are you thinking about the upcoming fight?" he asked.

"I'M GONNA PUMMEL THAT GUY TO THE GROUND. NO ONE GOES AROUND LABELLING HIMSELF AS STRONG WITHOUT MY APPROVAL."

Kid and Maka shared a glance and rolled their eyes (symmetrically of course). Typical of Black*Star.

So… Maybe he was wrong about this being something different. Maybe he just wanted to let his ego work itself out or something. Either way, Black*Star was still the same lovable (not) guy that they all came to understand and respect (mostly).

—Line Break—

As Wei Zhao walked into his new apartment in Death City along with his sister, he wondered about who they were going to fight the next day when school started. Apparently it had been a big thing, because he had been hearing rumors nonstop that their opponents were apparently training really hard. He frowned a bit, wondering what kind of big deal it had to be for the guy to get himself so worked up over this.

He brushed the thought away, instead turning his attention over to his sister, who was currently piggybacking him after falling asleep on the train. Despite being only two years younger than him, the 17-year old loved his sister to a fault, almost always obliging to her whims no matter how ridiculous they might have been. Pearl Zhao had always been bright and cheerful unless the situation had called for her to be serious. Being extremely talented and eager to see more, she had asked her older brother to help her learn more and more about the world, never backing down from any of the challenges she was given, whether it was exercise or any of the lessons that he, the Genius of Washington, had to give her.

It was with this mindset that the siblings had decided to travel the world, absorbing in all the information that they could gather, as well as honing their abilities as weapon and meister. It was almost curious how they had yet to travel to Death City, the home of Lord Death. Wei supposed that given the rest of the time that they had travelled the world, it was somewhat acceptable that he and Pearl had yet to get around to going to Death City.

Normally, they would've been comfortable with just staying at their academy in Washington, but according to their principal, they were so far ahead that it would be better for them to transfer over to the main academy in Death City, as the establishment they lived in was, according to the principal, rather lacking compared to the headquarters of DWMA. Once the transfer papers got through, Wei and Pearl were off to Death City, which brought them up to where they currently were.

Wei started wondering when his sister was going to wake up. He knew better than to just let her down onto a new bed that she hadn't slept in before, and didn't want to have to carry everywhere when he started exploring.

Suddenly, the sleeping mass on Wei's back started stirring.

The first thought that crossed Wei's mind was_ "Well speak of the devil."_

"Hmm… Wei, where are we?"

"Pearl, we're at our new apartment."

Pearl took a moment to get off her brother's back, and then started exploring. It was a nice apartment, with two bedrooms and a decent-sized kitchen along with room for a couple of couches. The kitchen part enticed the two siblings the most. Both Wei and Pearl were great cooks and loved experimenting in order to discover new tastes. The only downside to this was that the experimenting had allowed the siblings to find out all their food allergies as well.

As Wei and Pearl finally explored every crevice of their apartment, Pearl finally spoke up. "So what do we want to do now? We still have some time before night."

As the two contemplated this, Wei's stomach started growling. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but as they had just moved in, they didn't really have anything to cook.

"How about exploring to find some good restaurants to eat at?" Wei suggested.

"Hmm… Sounds good to me."

Out the Zhao siblings went, hoping to grab a bite of food.

—Line Break—

As Tsubaki sat at an empty table at DeathBucks, she found herself thinking towards tomorrow, the day that the new students would arrive. Knowing Black*Star, she had to make sure that he didn't get out of control during the fight. As this fight wasn't a life or death battle, she knew he wouldn't really take the fight as seriously as he would a fight with someone like Asura or Mifune-sensei. While most people thought he was training for the upcoming fight, Tsubaki knew the truth. He was training with Kid because he knew that in order to surpass God one day, he had to surpass Kid first.

Being deep in thought, Tsubaki failed to notice the two people coming to her table with some food. She finally noticed when the taller guy started talking.

"Umm… excuse me? Do you mind if we share the table? All the other tables are kinda full."

Snapped out of her thoughts, Tsubaki glanced up to see a pair of black eyes staring into hers. Seeing as the guy seemed nice enough, she turned her attention to the other person. A very similar set of eyes stared into her own. As she looked over the two, she noticed that both of them had black hair as well, along with similar face structures. Which led her to the idea that the two of them were siblings. The guy was tall, with a somewhat skinny-ish build to him, but still lean. His eyes held a look that was well beyond his years. His sister wasn't too different in how she looked, but shorter than him. Significantly. There was a bright look in her eyes as well, with a large amount of potential excitement in them.

Before she could say anything else, the guy continued.

"Sorry, I forgot to introduce the two of us. I'm Wei, and this here is my sister Pearl." He said, confirming her suspicions. "And it's alright if you don't want us to sit here, we can always find another seat."

Tsubaki shook her head for a second before smiling. "No, it's fine. You can sit here. I'm Tsubaki. I don't think I've ever seen you around Death City before. Do you go to the academy?"

Wei and Pearl sat down before answering. "We actually just moved here today. Normally, one of the two of us was going to cook, but we don't exactly have anything to cook with right now so here we are."

Pearl piped up then. "We were going to go explore the city more, but we found this Deathbucks and figured we had to try it out. We come from Seattle, so it's weird seeing a different brand of coffee than the ones that we see at home."

Tsubaki's eyebrows perked up at this. They came from Seattle? Were they the new students that were coming in? They seemed so… cheerful and harmless. "If I may ask, why are you moving here?"

Pearl spoke again. "We're actually here to meet an old friend that we heard was here."

This piqued Tsubaki's interest. So they weren't necessarily the new students after all. As she thought about this, her eyes travelled over to Wei again. Compared to his sister, he talked a lot less. While Pearl seemed like the super cheerful girl that everyone would want to be friends with, Wei seemed like the quiet but just as likeable brother with a protective streak that was not unlike Soul's.

She figured they couldn't be the new students, seeing as the only time she had ever seen siblings working as meister/partner was in the situation where the siblings were both weapons, such as in the case of Kilik and the Pots and Kid, Liz and Patty.

After a few more minutes of idle conversation with Wei and Pearl, Tsubaki got up to leave. As she figured that they wouldn't be in Death City for long, she went out of her way to get their phone numbers so they could chat again sometime.

—Line Break—

After Tsubaki left, the siblings ate in silence for a little while before Pearl spoke up again.

"So… how do you like Tsubaki?"

"She's definitely a nice person. But did you notice something about her soul?"

"Yep. She's a weapon."

"Neat. So we'll be seeing her in classes once we get to school tomorrow. Speaking of which, why did you say we were meeting up with an old friend?"

"Well, we are meeting Mifune-sensei later when we start going to school here."

"Oh cut it, Mifune's not that old."

One again, the bickering of the siblings continued on for a while before they got home.

/

**So how was it? Terrible, right?**

**I'm sorry if it doesn't sound like I think I'm doing well, I just have no real confidence when it comes to this stuff, seeing as I've never actually written stories before. I'm a big-time bookworm, but reading a story and writing one are completely different from what I've found so far.**

**Please R&R. I want/need feedback to see how I can do this better. I have a plot lined up in my brain but I want to figure out how to better execute it.**

**Also, still kinda need a title**

**Thanks!**

**XWX**


	3. Chapter 3

**Note:**

**So far no reviews. I guess I should've expected as much for a first fanfic. Welp, let's see how I do. **

As Maka and her resonance team waited at the entrance to DWMA, she couldn't help but feel a bit of unease. While Black*Star's statement from the day before had bothered her somewhat, she hadn't really dwelt on it. Instead, what was bothering her was that Mifune had decided not to wait with them and had gone on ahead to greet the new students at the bottom of the stairs. While she could understand the new students needing a guide, she figured that he could've waited at the entrance like the rest of them.

As it was, Maka was leaning on one of the supports that held up the school, with Soul sitting on the ground next to her. In a way, she was thankful for having Soul there. It helped her maintain her peace of mind even in light of the fact that Kid was close by as well. She didn't know when she started developing an attraction to the Shinigami (maybe sometime during the reconstruction of Death City), but the attraction had developed continuously. Having Soul nearby as a moral support kept her from hyperventilating nowadays when Kid was around.

Part of the start had to do with his antics. His OCD, while somewhat grating at times (she still remembered the time that he had gone insane when her left pigtail was the tiniest fraction of a centimeter off), was actually something to be respected, as it contributed to Kid's habits of keeping things orderly, something she could appreciate. His breakdowns over symmetry were also kind of cute, albeit in a strange way. It was always amusing to see the normally calm Kid have a fit over something small and insignificant.

Soul had noticed it during their last practice session with Black*Star and while he was happy that Maka had found her feelings for someone finally, he couldn't help but be concerned, having the overprotective older brother mentality that had developed over the years of their partnership. While he wondered about whether Kid knew about Maka's feelings or not, another person was having different, but similar thoughts.

—Line Break—

Kid was trying very hard to focus on symmetry at the moment. It helped to distract him from his attraction to Maka. While it had just started out as a fascination over how she was almost always symmetrical, unlike himself with the stripes— THE STRIPES! They're hideous!

And there went Kid's thought process. Again. Goddamn symmetry-obsessed problems. Clearly, once you're a symmetry-obsessed freak, you stay that way.

—Line Break—

As Wei and Pearl walked up to the school, they couldn't help but notice a familiar swordsman waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

"I figured it was you two when Lord Death mentioned that the new students were from Washington" Mifune said with a smile.

Wei smiled back. "It's been too long, Mifune-sensei. How have you been?"

Mifune couldn't help but think back to the day he first met the siblings. They had left quite an impression on him that day, being quite the duo back then.

"Well, as you can see, I'm teaching here at DWMA now, so that's a thing. I'm here to take you to your fight. We can chat as we walk up the stairs."

—Line Break—

Black*Star and Tsubaki were starting to wonder when their opponents would appear when Mifune appeared coming up the steps along with the two new students. Tsubaki's eyes widened for a few seconds as she recognized the two siblings walking up behind Mifune.

Black*Star was first to speak "FINALLY. WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOREVER! WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?"

Pearl spoke up, "We were actually chatting here with Mifune-sensei and – oh hi Tsubaki!"

Maka glanced over at them, somewhat confused. "Tsubaki, do you know them?"

Tsubaki blushed for a second before answering "Kind of. I just met them yesterday."

Turning her attention back to the siblings, she queried "I thought the two of you said that you were here to visit an old friend."

Pearl answered "Yeah, that would be Mifune-sensei over here. We met a long time ago."

At that moment, the strongest resonance team at the DWMA all shared one thought: "Whaaaat?"

"You mean, Mifune was a teacher before?"

"How long ago was this?"

"Why didn't you say anything Mifune?"

"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP! I CAME HERE FOR A FIGHT AND I WILL GET ONE!"

Black*Star's voice punctured above the rest as he finally got everyone's attention.

"I don't like how you're getting all the attention. So I'm going to turn the attention back to me by beating you down! Tsubaki!"

"Right!"

Tsubaki changed into her chain scythe form and Black*Star shifted into a fighting position.

Pearl only sighed for a few seconds before stretching out her hand. "Let's do this Wei."

Wei only nodded and then transformed into a katana for Pearl, who set herself up for a strike right away.

Maka frowned. A katana? That was what all this excitement about? A katana meister?

"Mifune, is there something really special about these two?

"You mean aside from me teaching them all they know about that fighting form?

"Mhmm."

"Yes. There's a lot more to them than you might expect."

—Flashback—

_The swordsman walked into the home of the people he was being hired as a bodyguard for. For the second time that day, he wondered who it was. He only knew that he was being offered a healthy sum of money for the job. Normally, he wouldn't have agreed to do something like this, but he needed the money. _

_When he finally got a good look at his new charges, he decided that the money they were paying was a bit much. He would've agreed to the job for much less had he known that the people in question were so adorable._

_A 10-year old boy and what looked like his 8-year old sister walked up to him with a curious look in his eyes._

"_Are you the guy that Mom and Dad hired to watch after us while they go on a business trip?"_

_Mifune was starting to wonder whether he was guarding or baby-sitting them. Not that he minded the latter._

"_Yes, I do believe I am. I'm Mifune."_

_The boy glanced at his sword (they always did) before looking at him again._

"_I'm Wei. And this is my sister Pearl. Umm… Pearl, do you want to say hi to Mifune-sensei?"_

_Pearl poked her head out from behind her older brother. "Hi Mifune-sensei!"_

_Mifune struggled to hold back a smile before noticing the honorific that Wei had just used._

"_Did you just call me sensei?"_

_Wei looked abashed for a few seconds. _

"_I know I said watch after us, but Mom said that the reason that she paid you so much was so that you could teach us what you knew about swordsmanship. Well, my sister at least."_

_Mifune frowned. It wasn't really regular for him to teach children how to handle a weapon. _

"_What about you, Wei, are you going to learn how to use a sword?"_

_Wei shook his head. _

"_I'm actually a weapon, so mostly Pearl. I'll learn a bit, just not that much." he said as he transformed into a katana for his sister to demonstrate to Mifune. _

_Mifune was about to make a comment about not teaching children such dangerous things when Pearl turned her puppy eyes on him. He lost it. _

"_Ok ok fine just show me where the backyard is and we can start."_

_Behind his back, Wei and Pearl high-fived each other on their mission success._

"_YES!"_

_It wasn't until later that he found out about their family's history, and the power that the two of them had hidden behind those innocent eyes. _

/

**So how was this one? Also I still need a title that makes some sense, just based off what you've seen.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:**

**And finally, the fight. **

Black*Star charged straight at Pearl, throwing Tsubaki forward to try and entangle Wei so he could get in for a quick hit. Pearl batted away the offending scythe with a quick slash, preparing her own weapon for the next strike. When the chain scythe came at her again, this time she jumped over it and planted Wei through one of the chains to lock her in place. The moment Tsubaki was stuck in place, Pearl grabbed Wei and charged straight at Black*Star before he could react. Before they could hit him though, Tsubaki changed into her smoke bomb form, allowing Black*Star to avoid the hit.

Pearl stopped for a second. "Huh. A multi-form weapon. Cool! How many forms do you have?"

For the moment, the battle had taken a break, so Tsubaki took the time to turn back into human form. "Well, I have 6 different forms I can take."

Wei took this moment to transform back as well. "Hmm. Six forms. Black*Star, was it? You have a good partner."

At this comment, Black*Star swelled up with ego "Of course I do! Thanks for recognizing such great talent! But that doesn't mean I'm going easy on you."

Wei only smiled. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about you going easy on us. Because if anything—

-we've been going easy on you" finished Pearl.

Now clearly, this had the desired effect.

"HOW DARE YOU NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY"

And just like that, they were back into fighting.

—Line Break—

As Maka watched Pearl and Black*Star go at each other again, she started asking Mifune more questions.

"Mifune, when they said they were going easy, were they serious?"

Mifune nodded. "The very fact that Wei is in that weapon form is proof that they're not taking this fight seriously."

Kid was confused. "Do you mean that Wei has a more advanced weapon form of a katana?"

Soul put in his own thought. "Being able to advance your own form must be really cool."

Liz was of similar opinion. "So it must kind of be like how Patty and I can use the Death Cannon when we're resonating with Kid."

Mifune merely shook his head. "You're somewhat right in saying that he has a more advanced form, but it's different from that. You see, Wei is actually a multi-form weapon as well, in a sense. He's just using his katana form right now to trick them into thinking that it's his only form, seeing as I taught all they know about fighting with swords."

The silence that followed for the next few seconds was broken by a unified "WHAT?"

Kid and Maka still had a question. "Mifune, what do you mean by 'in a sense'?"

"Just watch and wait."

—Line Break—

The battle raged on between the two, Tsubaki constantly changing form to try different angles and beat Pearl. Despite the changes in style, Pearl was always a step ahead of them, always anticipating everything.

When Tsubaki changed into a ninjato and the two utilized Speed*Star, Pearl only smiled and blocked.

"Too slow."

Changing into a shuriken did no good as well for him, as Pearl utilized the same trick that she did before when Tsubaki first started out the fight as a chain scythe, requiring Tsubaki to switch back to smoke bomb to save Black*Star again.

"Predictable."

"SHUT UP"

Clearly, Black*Star was losing it, as he went at Pearl without even a weapon. Just before he got in striking distance though, "Black*Star" suddenly transformed into Tsubaki.

"Dummy mode"

At that moment, Pearl felt movement behind her and turned just in time to avoid getting hit by Black*Star's Soul Menace attack. She retaliated by hitting him square in the stomach with the flat side of Wei.

"Almost got me, but no."

As Black*Star tumbled right next Tsubaki, everyone could feel the frustration coming out from him before he calmed down again.

Pearl quickly broke that.

"Finished yet? I haven't even broken a sweat."

And just like that, Black*Star snapped.

"DON'T LOOK DOWN ON ME"

While it was clear now that Black*Star and Tsubaki were quite possibly outclassed by Pearl and Wei, it didn't stop him from trying to beat them up still. It almost confused the siblings until they realized that they had only tallied up five weapon forms and were missing the sixth. They decided to play along with it until they saw the final weapon.

As blade clashed with blade, Black*Star finally decided to go on the extreme offensive.

"Tsubaki, Enchanted Sword mode."

"Right."

As Tsubaki began changing into the form that she obtained from her brother, Pearl started talking with Wei.

"So that's weapon number six. You think Black*Star finally lost his mind?"

"Didn't he lose his mind a while back?"

"Well, I guess you're right."

"Pearl, you know that I'm almost always right."

"Fair enough, should we show him a bit more of what we have?"

"Let's do it."

Once Tsubaki finished transforming, Black*Star rushed Pearl, fully planning to beat her into a pulp with Shadow*Star technique that came with the enchanted sword. What he didn't expect was for Pearl to take the first step in attacking, as Wei suddenly changed into a bo staff, knocking Black*Star around before changing mid-swing into a more classic longsword that Black*Star barely avoided getting hit by. As he was dodging though, Wei changed again, this time into a dagger that Pearl pressed into Black*Star's neck.

"Give up yet?"

Black*Star only responded by jumping away from the two, before charging at them again, this time more cautiously, as he didn't want to be taken by surprise again. What shocked him though was the weapon that came flying at his face; a chain scythe, almost exactly like Tsubaki's.

—Line Break—

"What the hell?"

"How is he doing that?"

"Why does he look almost exactly like Tsubaki?"

As Pearl spun around Wei's chain scythe form in order to disorient Black*Star, Maka turned to Mifune once again. "Mifune, is this what you meant when you said 'in a sense'?"

Mifune smiled. "Indeed. Wei and Pearl are members of the Zhao family, a very powerful bloodline of weapons. Their family is kind of like Tsubaki's family in that the eldest child usually inherits the multi-form weapon ability. What makes them different is that the second child in their family ALWAYS ends up being the meister for the first child. The abilities are transferred through the weapon side of the family and now it's ended up with Wei and Pearl. The strength that they're showing now though, was obtained through years of travelling around the world, learning all that they could. While siblings don't always make the best teams, this family is the one exception to that standard. Take a look at their souls and you can see what I mean."

At this, Maka and Kid opened up their soul perception. What they saw shocked them.

"I-I can barely tell the difference. Why is that?"

Kid had an answer ready. "It's because they're not resonating right now. They're synchronizing."

Mifune nodded again. "Correct. While the siblings do have the ability to resonate, what they're doing right now is almost a perfect substitute. While resonating is matching the wavelengths of the soul, synchronizing is matching the souls themselves, to the point that when you look at them with your perception, you can't even tell the difference. Right now, they're not fully synchronizing. When they fully synchronize, their thoughts, moves, even their breathing becomes unified. And that's just when they're synchronized. They haven't even included any resonating yet."

Soul gaped for a second "That's so cool. But why did Wei's chain scythe form look almost exactly like Tsubaki's?"

"I'm actually not completely sure why," Mifune admitted, "but for some reason, Wei has had a one-of-a-kind weapon ability since he was born. It's unique in that unlike every other weapon in existence, Wei actually had to obtain his weapon forms. He wasn't born with them."

Patty asked her first question then. "So how did he get his weapon forms?"

"Anytime I come into contact with a weapon, whether it be another person or soulless object, I can kind of absorb the information and use it to transform into that weapon at any point going into the future. I can also use the information I have from the weapons that I've transformed into before to become a new weapon based off the previous information."

The group turned to see Wei and Pearl walking over them, with Tsubaki draped over Wei's back, unconscious. Black*Star, who was also unconscious, was being dragged along the ground by Pearl.

Wei smiled sheepishly. "We might have gone a bit overkill in beating them, so could one of you show us where the nurse is? I kinda feel bad about hurting someone as nice as her."

"This guy on the other hand…" Pearl said, "is so full of himself that it was actually kinda satisfying knocking him into the dirt. Over and over again."

"I know we sounded kinda arrogant out there, but Black*Star was really being annoying, so we just had to blow off his temper to feel better."

"Wait, so were you actually going easy on them?" Soul asked.

Pearl thought for a moment before answering. "Does not fully synchronizing and still beating them count as easy?"

"Given the ease with which you two fully synchronized back when I was teaching you two how to fight with a sword, yes."

Wei scratched the back of his head, careful not to poke Tsubaki by accident. "Give us a break. We only figured out how to perfect the synchronizing after something like fifty lessons Mifune-sensei. And even when we synchronized you still beat us."

"The two of you were ten and eight. That's not exactly an age where you can beat an adult in a fight."

Maka interrupted "Umm, don't you think Tsubaki should get to the nurse? She isn't exactly the stubborn material that Black*Star is."

"Oh yeah, right. While we're going there you can ask me and Pearl questions."

With the fight over, the entire resonance team decided to show them the way to the nurse, as they were still bursting with questions to be answered.

**So… good? Bad? Terrible?**

**Am I doing any good at this or are you guys just reading because you're bored?**

**Someone give me some pointers, I've never written out a fight before.**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:**

**Thanks to Twilighttiger1602 for doing the first review on the fanfic. In light of his suggestion, the title of this is now Synchronized Souls **

Tsubaki woke with a start, taking a moment to realize that she at the entrance to school, but rather in the infirmary. She tried to get up, wincing in pain, before a hand on her shoulder pushed her back down.

"Easy there, don't try anything just yet" a voice commanded "you're not exactly in a physical state to move right now."

Tsubaki glanced over to see Wei with a concerned look on his face. It was kind of strange in a way, a person showing a kind of concern for her that most people didn't exactly show. Black*Star had shown concern in the past for her, to the point of him panicking when it looked like she had been absorbed by her brother. But for someone to stick in a single place for her for something as trivial as the results of a supervised match was somewhat strange.

"Why are you here?" she queried.

Wei forced a small smile. "I kinda feel bad for what happened during that fight. I mean, you and Black*Star did take a rather severe beating from me and Pearl."

Tsubaki concentrated for a moment before she remembered what Wei was talking about.

_Flashback_

_As Black*Star quickly dodged the chain scythe, he failed to notice that Pearl was starting to position herself behind him, as all of a sudden, the head of the offending scythe seemed to elongate into a spear that almost nailed him into the ground. Barely dodging that, Black*Star was unable to see that Pearl had used that moment with the chain scythe to pull herself into a position behind Black*Star, from which that point the Wei turned into a shuriken that formed itself in Pearl's hand, before being launched at Black*Star's exposed back. Noticing the shuriken before Black*Star could, Tsubaki transformed into a chain scythe, seeking to intercept the shuriken midflight. What she didn't expect was that when she made contact with the shuriken, she felt a full blast of Soul Menace rushing through her body, unlike anything that Black*Star had ever pulled off before. She didn't even have a moment to scream in pain, the Soul Menace knocked her out, forcing her out of her weapon form as she rolled across the floor. Black*Star could only register what happened to his partner for a split second before the next thing he knew, he was being pummeled into the ground by what looked like a very heavy gauntlet. The next moment, the gauntlet expanded in size before being smashed back into his face. Black*Star's vision went dark almost instantly._

Once she got out of the flashback, another thought occurred to Tsubaki, one that she had been meaning to ask Wei from the moment that she saw his last few transformations. "Why did your chain scythe form look almost like mine? And what exactly was that last blow I felt?"

Distracted with something in his hands, Wei didn't hear the question. All of a sudden realizing that Tsubaki had said something, he glanced up. "Sorry, what did you say?"

After she repeated the question, Wei answered. "To answer your first question, I have this weird ability that I've never been able to fully understand. Put simply, it allows me to copy weapons. A more complicated way to explain it is that I can absorb the information from a weapon, whether it be demon weapon or an inanimate one, and use it to form a new weapon form. It's really weird because unlike all the people before me, I wasn't born with a preset of weapon forms."

Tsubaki wondered about it for a moment before it hit her. "You and Pearl are members of the Zhao family."

"Yep. How did you hear about us?"

Tsubaki reminisced for a moment "My father was telling me about how there was another bloodline of multiform weapons, the difference being that the meisters also came from the same family. So you're the weapon in the family and Pearl's the meister?"

Wei nodded. "It was a really strange first couple of years when I was born. My parents were utterly confused as to why I didn't have any weapon forms. I only found out about my ability by chance when my mother suspected I was the meister and tried to make me wield my father as practice."

Tsubaki smiled a bit. "That must've been a weird first experience."

Wei smile a bit as well. "It really was. My mother was shocked. It was part of why she sent me and Pearl around the world, to absorb all the weapon information possible and teach Pearl how to fight with each and every single one. But I digress. I still need to answer your second question."

"That last hit that you felt coming out of me was actually Pearl's Soul Menace. When I changed into a shuriken, we synchronized for a moment and Pearl used that opportunity to charge me up with her Soul Menace before throwing me at Black*Star. She must've charged a lot more than usual, because that hit knocked you out right away. It's also why you're going to be bedridden for a couple more hours." At this Wei's face dropped apologetically. "Sorry, I didn't know Pearl's Soul Menace would do that much damage."

When Wei felt a hand reach up to touch his face, he glanced up to see Tsubaki's hand. She looked him straight in the eye when she spoke next. "Black*Star and I challenged you to a fight. We lost because we weren't prepared for the amount of power that the two of you brought to the fight. That's all there is to it. You don't need to apologize."

Wei almost cracked a smile at this. "Yeah, about that… Pearl and I weren't joking when we said we weren't fighting seriously."

Tsubaki blanched. If that was them when they were taking a fight casually, she couldn't imagine how much stronger they would be when they fought seriously.

Chuckling a bit, Wei stood up. "I'd stay a little longer, but I told Pearl that I'd take her to go shopping for accessories for our room."

Tsubaki smiled "You really care for your sister, don't you."

Wei was about to answer when he heard the door open and a familiar voice speak.

"Sometimes I think he cares too much" Pearl said as she entered the infirmary. She fixed a stare on her brother. "I thought you'd be done talking sooner than later. It doesn't take that long for you to make a phoenix."

Wei held up his hands in surrender. "I didn't think she'd take that long to wake up either. You really did a ton of damage with that Soul Menace."

Now it was his sister's turn to take a hit, as she started apologizing profusely to Tsubaki about all the damage that was done to her body. Tsubaki tried to stop her, saying that Pearl didn't really need to apologize for something that was bound to happen in a fight.

"Either way," Wei began "Wait by the entrance and I'll catch up to you once I finish one."

As Pearl left, Tsubaki turned to Wei. "What did you mean when you said that you'd finish one?"

"Just wait and see."

After working on something in his hands for five more minutes, Wei placed something on the table beside Tsubaki before leaving. "I'll see you in class tomorrow."

After he left, Tsubaki strained her head, trying to see what Wei had placed on the table. To her chagrin, there was a vase blocking her view and no way for her to move it, as she had spent a good portion of her strength just reaching her hand to his face. As she remembered feeling his face, she started blushing, before trying to brush it off. While the action was done to reassure him that she'd be fine, it sent a flush of red running up her face thinking about it, thinking about how that gesture could have been read, had other people seen it.

As she was thinking about this stuff, she heard the door open again. She turned her head to the door, hoping that it wasn't Wei (she didn't want to him to see her when she was thinking about this stuff). To her relief, Maka walked through the door to check on how she was doing. Between her best friend and someone that she may have just started unintentionally crushing, she would really prefer her best friend.

"Wei just left the school. He said that you had woken up and I could go visit now. I was up at the library until this point. So how did that fight feel?" Maka queried.

Tsubaki thought for a moment.

"It felt kind of… dangerous, in a way. That attack that knocked me out wracked me with so much pain that I blacked out from it right away. What happened to Black*Star?"

Maka almost smirked. "Well, let's just say that after he woke up, he was going to come over, wake you up, and beat up Wei and Pearl for beating him. I put him out of commission though."

Tsubaki winced, knowing exactly what Maka was implying. The Maka Chop was, by all standards, possibly one of the most dangerous things that the people in school had to deal with if they pissed off Maka. Tsubaki figured that Black*Star should have known by now that pissing off Maka, whether directly or indirectly, was a terrible idea.

Another thought suddenly occurred to Tsubaki. "How long was Wei here?"

Maka thought for a moment. "Ever since school ended, which would put it at about, maybe five hours?"

Horror ran through Tsubaki's brain as she realized that she had been unconscious for at least ten hours. "Why did he stay here for so long?"

Maka frowned. "I'm not sure. He did mention that he felt bad about doing so much damage when he was taking you to the infirmary."

And with that, Tsubaki's attempts at maintaining a composed faced snapped. "He took me to the infirmary?"

Maka nodded before realizing why Tsubaki sounded so panicked now. "He did. Relax though, he was carrying you on his back, not bridal style. So you don't have to worry about thinking of him as your knight in shining armor." A thought suddenly occurred to Maka and her expression almost turned sinister. "Unless, you already like him?"

The only thing Tsubaki could do was lie there as her face turned beet red.

Maka chuckled "I'm kidding Tsubaki, you shou-"

Maka noticed something on the table by Tsubaki's cot. "Tsubaki, was this here earlier?"

Tsubaki watched as Maka gingerly picked up something from behind the vase, before getting a good view of what Wei had been working on earlier.

It was a phoenix. Made of white ribbon. Very intricately made as well, with what looked like a lot of weaving. What really got her attention though, was that on the breast of the phoenix, on the right side, there was a yellow patch, almost like—

"It's like your colors Tsubaki." Maka noted. "Did someone make this earlier?"

"Wei made it earlier." Tsubaki confirmed. "He was working on it out of my sight and when he finished, he put it on the table. Just behind the vase where I couldn't see it."

"Where you couldn't see it huh." Maka's brain was rushing with the possibilities. Did Wei leave it just outside Tsubaki's vision on purpose? Or did he forget? And why didn't he just give it directly to Tsubaki? Was he too embarrassed? Or was it that he didn't want Tsubaki getting all embarrassed over it? Maybe it was just that he wanted to place it somewhere where it wouldn't fall and get squished by something, ruining its look and grace.

As Maka turned to look at Tsubaki, she noticed that Tsubaki was an even deeper shade of red than earlier.

Now Tsubaki was certain of something. She definitely had a crush on Wei Zhao, a man she had just met only the day before, who had proceeded to soundly beat her and her meister the next day. Either they were in some sort of weird drama, or this was actually happening.

/

**More A/N stuff:**

**Phew. This was a really long one compared to the others**

**So I just realized what this sounded like, but I'm gonna keep because it makes me laugh: According to the last line of this chapter, beating up a girl and taking care of her later makes her like you. A lot. (Guys and girls, do NOT try this in real life. I am 100% sure that this does not work in real life, unless your life is significantly different from mine).**

**While this may seem a bit rushed relationship-wise, I would like to point out that at this time, it is just a crush. It's one thing to have a crush on someone, another to actually really love them. I'll be developing for a couple chapters more before diving into anything resembling an actual relationship. It's gonna be a nice and slow build-up, one that we can all appreciate.**

**Quick thing: I'll try to get a picture up to show what Wei made. It's actually something that I do when I'm bored.**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:**

**Prepare for some more casual stuff in this chapter. And I'm working on improving each individual chapter as time goes by, so feel free to check up on previous chapters.**

As Tsubaki walked into the classroom, she noticed a mass of black hair right next to where she usually sat. Taking a closer look, she realized that it was Wei taking a nap. Despite the fact that class was about to start, Wei looked like he wasn't going to wake up any time soon. Pearl sat next to him, reading a book while waiting for class to start. A look of concern crossed Tsubaki's eyes.

"Pearl, is it normal for Wei to sleep like this?"

Pearl glanced over at Tsubaki, who she didn't notice had just come in. And then she looked at her sleeping brother. "Oh, he's asleep again. Watch, there's an easy trick to wake him up."

With that statement, she poked him in the side. While Tsubaki was prepared for him to be slightly startled by the action, she didn't expect him to launch a good five feet in the air. When he crashed back down into the chair, she noticed his eyes were wide open.

Wei looked both directions, wondering who had poked him when he remembered his sister was sitting next to him. Realizing that Tsubaki had just witnessed this event, he turned her direction, where he saw her trying hard not to giggle.

He sighed, "Yeah I know, one of the most dangerous weapons in the world is ticklish. Who knew?"

Maka and Soul, who were right below them, saw the entire thing and had to stifle their laughter because Professor Stein was just walking in.

During the lecture, Tsubaki noticed that Wei and Pearl weren't entirely focused on the lecture, but rather things that they were working on in their hands. When she looked over at Pearl's hands, it looked like she was working on origami. On closer inspection, it looked like Pearl was making a giraffe.

When Tsubaki asked her about this, she barely glanced over before replying "Patty asked me to."

That made sense. She looked at Wei's hands and saw that he was working with ribbon. Remembering the phoenix from the day before (it was currently situated in the apartment she shared with Black*Star), she popped a question.

"Do you and Pearl love working on this stuff with your hands?"

Wei finished up what he was making (a pineapple, by the looks of it) before answering. "The two of us love art in general. It's just that when it comes to working on art, Pearl prefers paper while I prefer ribbon. We're pretty good with instruments as well."

Soul, who had been listening in, perked up "What instruments do you two play?"

Pearl, who had just finished the giraffe for Patty, replied "I play violin and cello while Wei plays viola, piano, clarinet, and a whole bunch of different instruments."

"Way to make four instruments sound more significant than it actually is Pearl" cut in Wei. "I don't play that many instruments. Just the first three and guitar. A bit of ukulele too when I'm bored."

Soul's eyes widened a bit. It was really unique in a way, seeing the kind of experience that came with travelling around the world to learn stuff. Maka, who had just started listening in on the conversation, piped up. "Did you learn how to synchronize your souls when you travelled around the world also?"

Wei fixed a hard glance on Maka before opening his mouth. Before he could mention anything though, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye and his hands snapped up to catch the scalpel that was flying at his face.

"Wei, I know it's only your second day, so could you please listen to my lecture?"

Wei nodded, "Apologies, Professor Stein."

And once again, they were back to listening to the lecture.

—Line Break—

After classes were finished, Pearl and Wei were about to walk home when Black*Star called them out. He seemed to have forgiven them for that unnecessarily brutal beating they had performed on him, so they were all fine now.

"Black*Star, what do you want?" Wei asked. "Please tell me it's not another fight. Getting beat two days in a row isn't exactly good for your morale."

Black*Star waved off Wei's comments. "Nah, I'll get to that some other time. I actually had something else in mind. You guys want to play basketball now?"

Wei blanched. "B-basketball?"

Black*Star, completely unaware of Wei's mental state, continued on. "Yeah, basketball. Come on, everyone else is going to be there, it'll be fun."

Pearl, who was pumped up upon hearing the word 'basketball,' dragged along Wei, who looked like he was starting to panic.

When they got to the court, everyone else was already there.

Kid was the first one to notice that Pearl and Wei had arrived "Great. You've arrived. Liz isn't playing so now we have eight players. A perfectly symmetrical number."

Maka, who was somewhat disappointed that she would have to play just to fuel Kid's symmetry session before she noticed Wei's panicked look and walked over to him "Wei, is something wrong?"

Wei looked down at the ground and mumbled something that Maka couldn't hear. "Sorry what did you say?" she queried.

"I'm absolute trash at basketball." Wei muttered, still not looking back up.

Maka's face brightened up somewhat. At least she wasn't the only person who was bad at basketball here.

When the teams were finally split up, it somehow ended up being the meisters against their weapons. Before they could get any further, Maka and Tsubaki (who somehow ended up becoming captains) were forced by almost everyone to set up a punishment for the losing team.

The moment Maka heard this, the look in her eye became downright sinister, and Tsubaki had a feeling that she knew where this was going.

"If you guys lose, Tsubaki and Wei have to go on a date for an entire day this Saturday."

After a few seconds of silence, the two weapons in question expressed the same thing.

"WHAT?!"

As Tsubaki and Wei became flustered by the idea of going on a date (Tsubaki's brain was raging along the idea of 'so soon?'), Soul's brain was trying to calculate a fitting punishment in his mind for the other team. He was about to whisper the idea in Tsubaki's ear, when Wei, who had finally composed himself, pulled him away.

"Don't bother with it" said Wei.

Soul, who was confused, asked why.

Wei looked at up the sky for a second, taking in a deep breath before answering. "Because Pearl's on the other team."

Still not seeing the problem, Soul whispered the idea into Tsubaki's ear. Tsubaki, who was finally calm, somewhat (she was pretty sure her heart was still thumping), nodded her head in agreement.

Soul then turned over to the other team and started talking. "Alright, if that's your punishment, than here's ours. If we win, Maka and Kid have to go on a date, same conditions."

Maka's chuckles from her devious little punishment went completely silent for a few seconds before proceeding into the same reaction that Tsubaki and Wei had experienced earlier.

Kid on the other hand was just standing there, as if he had lost touch with reality. Black*Star tried waving his hand in his face, but there was no response. It took a few minutes for him to snap back into reality, but when he finally did, Pearl spoke up.

"How about a double punishment rule?"

Everyone looked over at Pearl. Wei, knowing where this was going, could only sigh in relief as he knew Pearl would look out for him in the way that siblings always did. His thoughts were instantly stomped out, however, when he heard Pearl's plans, which were quite the opposite of his own thoughts.

"If I score the most points out of everyone here, both parties have to go on dates."

It only took a moment for everyone involved to go back into their cringe-worthy states of depression. Soul was completely fine by it, thinking that Pearl wouldn't get to that point. Black*Star, who was thinking the same thing, voiced his opinion.

"Not happening! You might have won the fight yesterday, but this Star over here is going to show you up in the game of basketball! I'm going to get the most points!"

Meanwhile, Wei had only one thought.

"Sister dearest, why must you do this to me?"

And with that, the game began.

—Line Break—

After the first point, Wei already knew that the double punishment game was going to happen.

It was a very fast first point. The moment that Soul passed the ball back to Black*Star for the check, Black*Star passed the ball to Pearl, expecting her to get into position to pass the ball to one of them again.

Pearl had a very different idea in mind. The moment she caught the ball, she weaved through the weapons defense and leaped up to dunk the ball into the hoop. All in less than five seconds.

Everyone could only gawk as Pearl brushed herself off briefly before looking back at all of them.

"So, are we going to continue the game?" she asked.

As soon as she said that, everyone snapped out of their trance and possession of the ball went over to Tsubaki's team. Their possession of the ball only lasted about five seconds. Before the ball could even go halfway from Soul to Patty, Pearl intercepted the ball, turned around, and shot a three-pointer that didn't even touch the rim. The next few points followed in similar fashion, with Pearl creating almost every single play. There was the occasional moment where Soul or Tsubaki managed to score a point, but those were very scarce moments. Out of desperation, Black*Star and Kid tried to go for the 3-point shots, hoping that it would stave off the madness that was their teammate Pearl. It hardly ever worked, as the moment the ball was in the air, Pearl would take that opportunity to grab the ball during its flight path and dunk it into the hoop.

During a quick break in the game, Soul asked Wei a question.

"Exactly how much basketball did she play when she was younger?"

Wei had only one answer for the scythe.

"Junior World Championships. Carried her team to victory almost all by herself. Her nickname on the team was 'Never Miss' Pearl."

Soul's face paled, realizing how much of a mistake he had made in even trying to compete with Pearl.

By the end of the game, it was a near-total shutout. The weapons had only ten points, while Pearl had manage to score 45 out of the 50 points that the meisters had scored, more than everyone else playing combined.

After the game, when the Tsubaki, Maka and Kid were sulking, Wei walked up to Tsubaki and crouched down next to her.

"And that's why I never want to play basketball against Pearl" declared Wei.

Turning his attention to Tsubaki, he popped a question. "So… where do you want to meet up?"

At this point Tsubaki was turning red again from the thought of going on a date with a guy she had a crush on, so she wasn't sure how to respond. Wei, who was blushing somewhat as well, interjected his thoughts.

"How about we just meet up at Deathbucks for a chat and figure out where to go from there?"

Tsubaki struggled with her mouth for a moment before she finally let out a small whisper.

"Yeah, I think that'll work."

While this was going on, Maka and Kid were still on the ground sulking, not knowing how to approach one another.

Soul, Patty, and Liz, who had just arrived to see what was going on, started planning behind the backs of their meisters, organizing their actions so that they could finally get their meisters to start going out, now that all three of them had confirmed that the two of them liked each other.

After their plans were finished, they went over to Pearl, asking her if she needed any help in setting up the date between her older brother and Tsubaki. Pearl shook her head. "Wei is many things. A strong weapon, a smart guy, a good brother, and other things like that. But above all else, he is a gentleman. So trust me when I say this, he probably has this all planned out."

Black*Star, who had just regained consciousness (Pearl knocked him out with an elbow during the game by 'accident') wasn't so sure. "You're completely sure about this? I don't want your brother hurting my weapon."

Pearl didn't even hesitate in her response. "Yeah, absolutely."

—Line Break—

A few moments later, everyone started going home. Before Pearl could leave the court though, Tsubaki pulled her aside to ask her a few questions.

Wei looked at Pearl with a questioning glance before Pearl waved him off. "I'll be home soon, you can go on ahead."

Wei nodded but simply stood there, waiting for his sister.

Tsubaki had only one question for Pearl. "Could I get some advice about Wei?"

Pearl was confused. "Why would you want advice about W—"

A look of understanding crossed her face. "Oh, I see what you mean" she said, her expression morphing into something more akin to delight.

Back at their old school in Washington, the Zhao siblings had been objects of desire for almost everyone on the campus. People would come almost every single day to ask them out on dances and other occasions that were coming up. In light of this, the siblings came up with a response that they used for everyone: "Pass Pearl/Wei's screening process and you might have a chance."

It was the siblings' strategy for people who wanted to ask them out. They had to get past the screening process of the other sibling, otherwise they wouldn't even been considered. No one had ever gotten past the screening process for either sibling, until Tsubaki unknowingly passed it just now. This made Pearl extremely happy.

Tsubaki was a nice girl, good-looking, and Pearl thought the two of them together would be a good match, if almost perfect. In her eyes, she had found the best sister-in-law possible. The only downside to this was that she would get to spend less time with her brother, something that she could handle, now that she had a tight-knit group of friends in this school.

"Ok, here's some things you should know."

/

**I feel like this chapter went on longer than I needed it to. Oh well.**

**R&R, I feel like there are tons of things wrong with this chapter, but I can't be 100% sure. **


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:**

**Man, my chapters keep getting longer and longer.**

As Tsubaki stood in front of mirror, pondering what to wear, Pearl's suggestions echoed in her mind.

_Flashback_

"_Part of getting points with Wei has to do with being yourself. Wei makes a point of avoiding people who just want to just date him because of his reputation. And make-up. He hates it. 'It's like you're putting on something that's hides the real you.' But you'll be fine."_

_Tsubaki sorted through her thoughts, trying to find other things that she would need to know about Wei. "Any habits that I should know? Besides the one where he brushes his hair to his right?"_

_Pearl was mildly impressed. Almost no one noticed that about Wei. It was always his little thing that he did that no one seemed to care about. "Well, he does have a habit of talking to himself. It's his way of maintaining his sanity. But other than that, I'm sure you'll be fine."_

"_Anything about what I should wear?"_

"_Nah, just wear what you usually do, although if you want to wear something different, I'd still go for casual. Wei's not the type of person to get all worried about what someone else wears."_

It was these things that were now floating around her head, guiding her actions as she got ready for her day-long date with Wei. Part of her wanted to strangle Maka for coming up with the punishment that she did, while the other part of her wanted to thank Maka for doing something that would help her understand the guy that she was crushing on better.

Well, at least Maka was serving her own punishment as well, courtesy of Pearl's double punishment rule. Going on a date with Kid was definitely going to test Maka's composure. Being best friends, the two of them knew about each other's crushes, although Tsubaki's crush was a much more recent one.

Getting back to the question at hand, Tsubaki once again wondered as to what she would wear, as Pearl's words once again echoed in her mind.

Pondering for a while, Tsubaki looked at the weather outside. Noticing that it was somewhat cold, she decided to go with a blue hoodie, as well as jeans. Checking herself over, she was satisfied with what she was wearing. As she was getting ready to go, there was a knocking sound at the door to her apartment. She knew it couldn't be Black*Star (he didn't forget the keys when he went out to train), so she was left to wonder who it was. She was taken by surprise when she saw the man wearing traditional Japanese clothing at the door.

"Father? What are you doing here?"

"Tsubaki." Sanjuro Nakatsukasa acknowledged her daughter. "You told me that I should find some time to visit you. How have you been?"

Tsubaki was at a loss of words for a few seconds before she answered. "I'm doing well. I was actually about to go out just now."

Tsubaki's father raised an eyebrow "Really now? Meeting someone, are we?"

Tsubaki's blush all but confirmed what he suspected. He sighed "Tsubaki, you're still young, and dating at this age is still an uncertain thing."

His daughter tried to explain "Father, I was kind of forced to as part of a punishment for losing in basketball."

Sanjuro's nostrils flared for a second. "Where is this guy? I'm going to go talk some sense into him. Forcing my daughter to go on a date just because she lost a game of basketball" he grumbled.

Fearing for Wei's safety in the next few moments, she tried to clarify. "Dad, we were both forced into it."

His anger sated calmed for a few seconds, before logic took in "But if both of you were forced, that must mean you either really hate each other (which I doubt), or you have a crush on him. Who is this guy? You didn't mention him in your last letter."

Sanjuro's perception at times was a too good for Tsubaki's liking. Tsubaki decided just to mention some of the more ambiguous details. "Well, he's a weapon who just transferred here from Washington, his name is Wei, and he's a really nice guy."

At the words 'weapon' and 'Washington', Sanjuro's ears perked up. "What kind of weapon?"

Tsubaki was almost frustrated at this point, seeing that she would almost be late for her date. "Multiform. Can I get to my date now?"

While Sanjuro wanted to continue asking her more about this 'Wei' person that she was going on a date with, he decided against it. "Sure, go ahead. But how about I tag along just to see what kind of guy this Wei is."

Seeing no way out of this, Tsubaki sighed. "Alright."

—Line Break—

"Wei, come on, you're going to be late for the date."

"Pearl, relax. I've already got it planned down to the minute. Besides, it doesn't take that long to get to Deathbucks."

"Deathbucks? Really? Of all the places you had to choose, you chose Deathbucks."

"It's a day-long date, and besides, we still haven't completely memorized the map of the city yet, so I figured we'd start it out at someplace easy."

Pearl sighed. Sometimes her brother could be one of the densest guys out there. Despite being a gentleman at almost any given time, he was still somewhat in the dark as to dating, seeing as no one had ever passed her screening process to even have a chance at him. Wei had let one or two guys pass the screening process before, but both of them had chickened out of even asking her out after Wei had made it clear that he would have coffins laid aside for them if they even tried to hurt her.

While it limited her interactions with guys, it didn't necessarily stop her from trying to ask the occasional guy out. Clearly none of them had gotten the message, as Wei later explained to her that most guys were ridiculously dense when it came to how a girl was feeling about them.

Evidently, Wei was in a similar boat as those guys, seeing as he didn't realize what Tsubaki was feeling for him. While Pearl didn't exactly want Wei figuring out Tsubaki's feelings too soon, she still wished that he would be a little bit smarter about it.

A knock on her door distracted her from her thoughts. Pearl frowned. Who could it be? No one in Death City knew where they lived, and last time she checked, no one was stalking them from Washington. As she opened the door though, she realized that she forgot another possibility.

"Mom!" Pearl said excitedly as she threw a hug around her mother, who was practically an older, carbon copy of her.

Jade Zhao smiled, appreciating the close bond that she shared with her children. It felt like only a short time ago Wei and Pearl were little children, who would be trying to get their mother's attention whenever they could. Well, Pearl would. Wei was the guy who admired his mother above all else but was a little bit more shy about it.

"Where's your brother?" she asked.

Wei popped out into his mother's sight. "Hi mom."

Jade fixed a stare on her son. "Why are you wearing that indoors?"

Wei looked down on his attire, plain white shirt with a black jacket and jeans, his favorite pendant, a Bico dragon, hanging from his neck (Bico is a real brand, go and search it up. I have a couple of necklace pendants from there). "Oh yeah, I'm going out today."

Raising an eyebrow, Jade asked a chilling question that no son ever wanted to hear. "I came here just to visit the two of you and you're telling me that you're going out? Exactly where are you going young man?"

Pearl piped up from where she was hugging Jade "He's going on a date!"

The silence that followed was broken by the Zhao matriarch's incredulous stare.

"You, on a date?" she said

Wei raised up his hands in surrender "Pearl victimized me in a double punishment game of basketball the other day."

Pearl pulled out her most innocent look "I did no such thing."

Jade, who at this point knew the antics of the siblings so well, just sighed. Clearly, Pearl was responsible for this recent development. But in light of the fact that her son was about to go on a date, she felt that some teasing was in order. So, with some fake sniffling, she began.

"I can't believe it. My baby boy, growing up so fast" she started as she wiped fake tears from her eyes "It only seemed like you were this small" she put out her hands for emphasis "only yesterday."

Wei groaned. Out of all the people in his family, his mother was probably the most in touch with their generation, which was both a good thing and a bad thing due to the fact that while she understood the generation better than most parents, it also let her be in touch with all the right ways to mock people, like what she was doing now.

"Not even five minutes here and you're already teasing me." Wei muttered.

"Oh don't worry about that son, this can't be as bad as that one other time where—"

"Umm, Mom, do you think I could get to the date now?" Wei asked.

"Sure, sure I'll let you get to that but first, what's her name? What's she like? Did you meet her at school?"

Unprepared for the questions, Wei took a moment to compose his thoughts. "Ok so her name's Tsubaki, she's this really nice girl, yes I met her in school."

Jade's eyes perked up. "Tsubaki, huh?"

"Yeah that's her na—wait Mom, do you know her?"

Jade simply hummed. "Oh, maybe. You know what, I think I'll tag along for the date."

"Yeah sure—wait what?" Wei gawked.

Jade merely smiled teasingly. "I would love to see what kind of girl was able to steal the heart of my son so quickly after he got here, you know. Come on Pearl, let's see how this date goes. I can't wait to tell your father about this when he gets back from his mission with Aunt Ro."

Wei sighed, seeing no way out of this. "Alright, fine. You can tag along then."

And like that, the Zhao family was off to Deathbucks.

—Line Break—

As both families neared Deathbucks, Wei noticed Tsubaki and waved to her. Walking up towards each other, both people involved in the date failed to notice the presence of the other's parent. When they got close enough, Wei suddenly noticed the man behind Tsubaki and went into panic mode.

He had heard the stories before of the legendary thing known as the Fathers Rage when it came to their daughters. In that instant, he knew that there was a good chance for him to become stain on the ground if he crossed even the tiniest of lines.

What saved him in the next moment wasn't Tsubaki, but rather his own mother.

"Sanjuro! What a coincidence! When my son said he was going out on a date with someone named Tsubaki, I didn't expect it to be your daughter!"

Sanjuro, equally shocked, managed to pull out a smile. "Jade, it's nice seeing you again. I should've guessed that it was your son that was going on a date with my daughter."

He gave Tsubaki a smile. "You found a really good guy, Tsubaki. You two have fun."

At the same time, Jade was giving her son a pat on the head. "You picked out a really good one Wei, have fun with your date! I'm going to go catch up on old times with Sanjuro. Come on Pearl!"

And just like that the parents were gone, leaving the two weapons in utter shock for a few moments. When the shock finally lowered a bit, both weapons asked the same question, albeit with slightly different thoughts.

"What just happened?"

"_Our parents know each other?"_

"_Did I just survive my first meeting with her father?"_

/

**Definitely one of the tougher chapters for me to write, seeing as I don't exactly understand the mindset of a girl. I got writer's block for a short time because of that.**

**I often feel that the scariest thing in the world is rage of a father that you're dating. As the kind of guy who is a firm believer in the long-standing relationships, the scariest thing I can imagine is the father's rage. You literally cannot step out of line when a father is present otherwise he'll grill you to the ground without any mercy.**

**Also, Sanjuro is actually Tsubaki's father (look it up). **

**So yeah, this was basically a "meet the parents" chapter. I think I'll get on to the date next chapter. **


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:**

**So after a weird introduction of parents, we're finally at the date. Let's see how bad I do at this. **

"So…" Wei started, somewhat confused "that happened."

Tsubaki, who was at a loss of words for a while following that exchange between their parents, shook her head in confusion "I didn't know our parents knew each other."

Wei finally took a good look at Tsubaki, noticing the hoodie she was wearing. He never told anyone, but he had a bit of a thing for sweaters and hoodies. He often felt that women who went out of their way to dress more promiscuously often had nothing besides looks going for them, as well as maybe a strong desire for attention. Even then, that wasn't always a guarantee. As he often put it 'It's like a car accident. People always turn their heads to look, and it's not always pretty.' He very much preferred sweaters/hoodies over what people called fashion today. In his mind, they 'made the person look more warm and friendly'.

He shrugged "Me neither. You look nice." He didn't know where that came from, but he had to admit, Tsubaki looked nice at that moment. Part of it had to with the hoodie, but he had to admit, Tsubaki was beautiful, and she had one of the most accepting personalities that he had ever seen, which he figured she had to have because of Black*Star.

Tsubaki blushed. "Thanks, um, you look nice too." She wasn't lying. Tsubaki thought he was the perfect mix of everything. It almost seemed unreal to her that they were going on a date, despite the date being courtesy of the punishment game.

Wei was starting to wonder what Tsubaki was feeling exactly. It wasn't like she had feelings for him, did she? Unless… all of a sudden the reason Maka created that punishment in particular became clear to him. He knew Pearl well enough to know that Tsubaki would have been the first to pass her screening process. That, along with other things like why Pearl was grilling him about being late were starting to become clear to him.

Wei decided to store that information away for now and just proceed with the date.

"Have you had lunch yet?" Wei asked.

Tsubaki, still blushing somewhat, shook her head. "I was going to eat a bit before I came here yet, but my father showed up so I ended up getting distracted."

Wei chuckled. "That's pretty much what happened with me and my mom. How about we go get something to eat first before we do anything else?"

Tsubaki mouth turned up a bit. "Sure, that sounds good."

As the couple walked into Deathbucks to grab a bite, they failed to notice the three pairs of eyes spying on them from a good distance away.

"So Sanjuro, what do you think of the two of them going out?" Jade asked her friend.

"He's definitely a good man for her. I think she'll be fine in your son's hands." Sanjuro replied.

Pearl piped up from where she was, next to them. "I really hope they start dating. It's kind of awkward just watching them dance around the fact that they like each other."

"You sure Wei likes her?" Jade asked her daughter.

Pearl rolled her eyes. "Mother, Wei and I know each other inside and out. It's not hard for me to tell that he likes her."

Jade held up her hands in surrender. "Alright, alright, fine. If you insist."

—Line Break—

Maka walked down the street with her arm linked around Kid's. They had finally come to terms with each other's feelings for the other, and were by all accounts, a couple. As both of them wondered how this happened, Maka noticed two familiar people walking out of Deathbucks.

"Hey, there's Wei and Tsubaki." Maka pointed out.

Kid, who had been thinking to himself for a while, noticed them as well. "You want to follow them, see how their date goes?"

Maka nodded. "Well, I know Tsubaki likes Wei, so I want to see if she can get him to ask her out."

Kid looked thoughtfully at the two. Wei certainly was an interesting person. It wasn't often that you found a multiform weapon, much less one who was able to synchronize his soul with someone. Other than that though, he seemed kind of… normal.

"You sure you want to spy on them?" Kid asked.

"It's not spying, it's making sure that Tsubaki's ok." Maka countered.

Maka was partially telling the truth. While spying wasn't exactly the normal thing for her, she felt that this was the one time that it was necessary, as she wanted to make sure that Tsubaki was doing well with her date. That and she wanted to get all the details so she could embarrass her best friend later.

Kid sighed. "Sure, let's follow them."

"Yes!" Maka's fist pump into the air was all Kid needed to know that he was doing right by this relationship. He hoped that this relationship would last while it could, seeing as someone like Maka was hard to find.

—Line Break—

As Wei and Tsubaki were contemplating where to go next on their date, Wei suddenly stopped.

"Hmm? What is it Wei?" Tsubaki asked, turning her head to him.

Wei looked behind them at the crowd. "We're being followed."

Tsubaki frowned. Enemies? Here? "Do you know who?"

Wei closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. Tsubaki, who was examining him, noticed that his eyes seemed to expand for a moment, not unlike Maka when she was using her Soul Perception.

Wei's sigh of exasperation confused her.

"Did you figure out who's following us?" she asked.

Wei nodded. "Two people. Both very familiar. One Shinigami soul, and one Grigori soul."

Tsubaki was confused. "Grigori?"

"Souls with wings. They're really rare, not much known about them. This soul's kind of interesting though. There's an anti-demon wavelength in this soul as well."

Tsubaki's eyes widened. There were only two people with the souls that Wei just described. And last time she checked, the two souls in question were on a date. What were Maka and Kid doing, following them?

"Do you know what they're doing?"

Wei shook his head. "I can detect souls, and determine if they're weapons or not, but I can't tell what they're feeling or thinking. My perception isn't that strong. You want to try losing them?"

Tsubaki shook her head. "They'd still find us anyway. Both Maka and Kid have Soul Perception also, so losing them isn't really possible."

Wei frowned, not at the suggestion, but at the name. "Is his name really Kid? I keep thinking that it's a nickname."

Tsubaki giggled a bit at his confusion. "Well, his full name is Death the Kid, but he just goes by Kid. It makes him sound friendlier."

"I guess. But then there's his obsession with, what was it? Symmetry? Is he OCD?"

Tsubaki nodded. "Something like that. For him, symmetry is kind of like perfection."

Wei was confused. "But doesn't that make him the antithesis of symmetry? His hair?"

Tsubaki hushed him really quick. "Don't mention it around him. He throws a fit anytime someone mentions the hair."

Deciding that a change of subject would be good, Wei nodded. "So where do you want to go next?"

—Line Break—

Following Wei and Tsubaki proved to be an easy task for Maka and Kid, seeing as they could use soul perception to find their quarry whenever they tried to escape. While following them, they went out of their way to enjoy the things that the others were enjoying, seeing as they were still on a date.

So far, Wei and Tsubaki had gone into an ice cream store, hiking, and were now sitting on a ledge, enjoying the view.

Kid was the first to speak up from where they were hiding. "You know, spying on people isn't exactly my idea of a date. It feels kind of weird."

Maka sighed. "I did say I wanted to make sure that Tsubaki was doing ok with her date. Besides, you're learning some things about dating from Wei."

"I guess. You think Wei is a veteran at the relationship game?"

"Nah. From what I've seen though, Wei is actually the very image of a gentleman. He's doing everything in his power to make sure that they both have a good time."

Kid looked at the two thoughtfully. "Hm. I just might ask him for some relationship advice later."

A voice spoke up behind them. "You might not want to. This is the first time Wei has ever been on a date. Or in any form of a relationship."

Maka and Kid nearly jumped at the voice, before doing a 180 to see Pearl right behind them.

"How long have you been following us?" Maka demanded.

Pearl thought for a second. "About since you two started following them, I think. I thought you two were supposed to be on a date also."

Maka blushed. "Well, we were, and then I got curious about how the two of them were doing so I came here to check on them."

"You mean spy on them."

Kid sighed. "Maka said she was making sure that Wei would treat Tsubaki right on the date."

Pearl shrugged. "Fair enough. By the way, Wei knows that you two are spying on them."

Kid's eyes widened at this. "How do you know?"

Pearl sighed. "Because both of us have soul perception. And your souls aren't exactly regular souls compared to the people around you."

Maka's curiosity was piqued. "Has he found you also?"

Pearl shook her head. "There's actually a trick that only I can use to avoid Wei's perception. Our souls are so similar that if I stay close enough to him when he's using it, he can't tell the difference. Wei isn't great at pinpointing souls. It's more like a GPS. Like 'this soul is approximately here, with a radius of x meters' kind. It makes it easy for me to sneak into his own soul's radius and just hide there."

Maka and Kid were somewhat shocked. "Why hasn't he done anything?"

At this question Pearl was confused. "I don't know. I thought he'd lose you guys but it's almost like he's ignoring you on purpose. Unless… do you guys have soul perception?"

The two of them nodded. It made sense to Pearl now. Wei didn't lose them because he couldn't, so he was doing the next best thing. Ignoring them and just continuing on with the date.

"Come on," Pearl told the two of them. "Let's leave them alone for now."

"But I want to make sure that this goes well!" Maka complained.

"Maka, you know sometimes, couples need their privacy." Kid chided her.

Sighing in resignation, Maka admitted defeat. "Yeah you're right. Let's go."

And with that, the three of them left.

—Line Break—

"So…" Wei started "Did you like the date?"

Wei was uncertain about this whole dating thing. Sure it wasn't truly a date because it was forced, but it was still a date in the sense that a guy and a girl were going out to do things together. He wanted to do his best at being a good date.

Tsubaki smiled. "It wasn't as embarrassing as I thought it would be, especially considering what happened with our parents."

"Yeah that was weird" Wei agreed. He then stood up and stretched. "Want to go home now?"

Tsubaki got up as well, finally deciding to ask a question that she had been meaning to ask for a while.

"Umm, Wei?"

"Yeah?"

Tsubaki's feet shifted left and right for a few moments before she started blushing. "Do you think, we could do this in the future, as an actual couple?"

It took a few seconds for Wei to register the question before his cheeks started coloring. Regaining his composure, he finally gathered his thoughts. "You mean, as in actually dating? The two of us?"

Tsubaki's expression dropped. "I guess not." Inside, her mind was racing, feeling scorned. Did she do something wrong? Did Wei not like her or feel for her like she did for him? Before these thoughts could continue, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Surprised, she looked up to see Wei only a foot away from her face. He had a small smile on his face.

"At this point, I feel like it's too early. I mean, we've only known each other for about a week now." Wei stated. Before Tsubaki could respond, he continued. "How about this: We'll definitely go out on things like this in the future, getting to know each other more and more. It won't really be dating, but the more we know about each other, the more reason we'll have to start going out together as a couple."

At this, Tsubaki's spirits lifted. She hadn't done anything wrong. And while she really wanted to just start going out with him, she knew that the way he described would be better for them in the long run. Out of gratitude, she pulled him into a hug.

"Thank you." She whispered.

Wei simply smiled and returned the hug.

Tsubaki was happy.

They weren't a couple yet.

But she knew that with time, they would get to that point.

/

**Ok, this is the anime version of Soul Eater, but I figured one or two little manga details here and there wouldn't hurt (Grigori soul). **

**So yeah, I kinda just went and rushed it for Maka and Kid. One date and they're already boyfriend/girlfriend? Yep. I'm not really going to go that much into details for what happened with them. Seeing as they've known each other for a much longer time, I didn't feel like writing out their scene was as important. Fanfics with canon characters as couples are really frequently written. While most of those are written in detail, my reason for not going into detail is that, while they are important, they're not the center of focus in this fanfic. **

**Tsubaki and Wei on the other hand, will take more time so to speak. I won't be going over on what happens on every single outing (none of them, actually), but the idea is that once they get to a certain point, they'll start dating for real. As the central pair that I'm working on, I want to be able to work it very well as a pairing. So yeah, this'll take longer.**

**Random note:**

**Everytime I go back to writing this fanfic, I have to be careful not to write my own name instead of Wei. My Chinese name is actually Wei (sue me, I'm making myself an OC in a fanfic), so it's hard to keep my Chinese name and English name separate.**

**Other note:**

**Everything is rough draft, so to speak. None of this is proofread. I have no intention of getting a proofreader, as this is more of a hobby for me. Rest assured though, I intend to finish this. **


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:**

**Actually screw it, no author note this time.**

As Tsubaki walked back into her apartment, she saw her father waiting for her.

"So, how did the date go?" her father asked.

She looked around for a few moments. "Where's Black*Star?"

As if on cue, she heard some giant snoring coming from his room. Sanjuro chuckled. "Clearly he's exhausted from the long day. He really does like working out."

Tsubaki smiled. It was one of the things that she felt she had done right. At first glance, picking Black*Star as a partner was a terrible idea, seeing as his ego was through the roof and he was loud and obnoxious. Under all that though, Tsubaki knew that he had the potential to be very strong. And aside from Kid, she didn't think that any of the other students could match up to him, until Pearl and Wei transferred over. But Wei was what Sanjuro was asking about right now.

"So that aside, how was the date?" Her father asked again.

Tsubaki thought for a moment. "Well, we're not going out now, but maybe in the future it can happen."

Sanjuro smiled. "I figured as much. Jade may have never brought her children along when she came to visit, but she told me and your mother so many stories about them that I knew that they had to be really good children."

That brought up another question that Tsubaki meant to ask "How do you know their family? And how come I never met them?"

Sanjuro chuckled again. "I know their father, Wen Da, from back when I was a child. Our parents used to meet up quite frequently and they often let us fool around while they talked about 'adult stuff' as they put it. Jade I met when she was on a mission in Japan. She happened to stay at our home when the Zhao family was there. I swear, Wen Da and Jade fell in love practically at first sight. A few years along the road and the next thing I know, they're married with a son. We didn't keep that much in contact since they got together, seeing as they had their own children to manage and I had you and Masamune to work with."

Tsubaki was almost entranced by the short story. Her father had never really talked that much about his past before, so to hear this much was almost a treat. She was so interested that she didn't realize her eyes were drooping somewhat

"Either way though," Sanjuro continued, noticing her eyes "you're probably tired right now. I can tell you more about it tomorrow."

Tsubaki nodded in agreement before falling asleep on her father's shoulder, like what she had done when she was a much smaller child.

—Line Break—

When Tsubaki walked into the classroom on Monday, the first thing she noticed was that Wei was talking with Fire and Thunder, apparently telling the two kids about this one time that he and Pearl travelled up a mountain. The two children watched him, entranced, while Kilik, their meister, sat to the side with a smile on his face.

"So when Pearl was climbing up the mountain carrying me on her shoulder, we saw a white tiger! A live one, just staring down at the two of us with a curious look in its eyes. Pearl just stood there, shocked at seeing such a rare creature right in front of us. I'm pretty sure it was shocked seeing us right there."

"Either way, Pearl was so shocked by the sight that she didn't realize she was stepping into a hole. Next thing she know, plop, we're at the bottom of a hole. It took us hours to get back out and by the time we had, we were so exhausted that we almost took a nap. You know what happened next? The white tiger came back with its cubs. We got so distracted with the cubs that we forgot that we were supposed to climb back down the mountain. By the time we remembered, Pearl was downright shocked, and next thing she knew, plop! She was back in the hole. By the time she got back out, it was so dark that we ended up just following the white tiger to its cave and napped with the cubs. Next time we woke up, we were back at the bottom of the mountain. The tiger had dragged us all the way down the mountain just so we wouldn't take up space in her cave. After spending the day on the mountain, we were missing the cabin. Before we could get in though, boom! A ton of snow fell on top of me!"

Fire and Thunder giggled and started clapping. As class was about to start, he walked up to his regular seat, plopping down with a smile on his face.

"I didn't know you loved kids that much" Tsubaki said as she sat down next to him.

Before he could reply, Pearl spoke "Love them? He has a giant bag of tricks just for the purpose of making them smile and playing with them. He's got stories, hand puppets, little tricks—"

"Pearl, I think that's quite enough. No need to spoil my entire arsenal of child-entertaining tricks this early on" Wei cut in.

"Did that actually happen though?" Tsubaki asked.

Pearl nodded. "Definitely one of our more embarrassing and entertaining trips. Our parents were on the trip with us, and when they saw Wei buried under all that snow, the only thing they could do was laugh their heads off."

"Yep. Laugh at my misery. Oh how cruel my family is." Wei lamented with a small gesture of drama.

"Can it. You would've laughed too if you could see what it looked like."

Wei smirked. "Yeah, probably."

Before they could continue the conversation any further, Professor Stein walked in.

"Alright class, instead of our usual dissection today, Lord Death has asked me to take you all out into the desert where we've set up a place so that each team will have an opportunity to spar with Pearl and Wei. Wei and Pearl have already agreed to this, so whoever would like to go first, volunteer now."

Pearl spoke before anyone else could volunteer. "It's fine if you guys want to fight in resonance teams as well. Wei and I can handle it."

Everyone's eyes widened at this statement. It was one thing to fight one person at a time, which in everyone's opinion, was very manageable, seeing as everyone had heard about the thrashing that the Zhao siblings had given Black*Star. To go up against chain resonance teams though, was unheard of. For starters, Wei and Pearl would have to go up against three meisters and their weapons at once. To add onto that, the three weapon/meister partners would all be in a chain resonance, which would mean that their coordination would be nearly perfect. Aside from that, chain resonances also enhanced the abilities of the meister/weapon teams in question, which meant that if Pearl and Wei fought against Maka's resonance team, Black*Star would be much stronger than when they fought him alone.

Kilik was the first to volunteer. "If they're sure they can handle it, then can my resonance team try taking them on first?"

Stein nodded. "Very well. Come on then, out to the desert we go."

—Line Break—

While they were walking towards the sparring place, Tsubaki started talking to Wei. "Are you sure the two of you wanted to take on an entire resonance team?"

Wei shrugged. "I'm fine with it. I usually don't mention this, but back in Washington, Pearl and I took on our entire academy all at once and they didn't even stand a chance. So you can see why Pearl is fine with taking on a bunch of people at once."

When they finally got to where they were going, the first thing everyone noticed was that it was a large flat ring, layered with a large amount of square tiles. Other than that, it was a very simple arena.

Stein waved the students over. "Alright, everyone participating in the fight onto the ring. Everyone else over here. Watch and learn what you can."

Kilik and his team walked onto the ring, with Wei and Pearl right behind them. While the resonance team got ready to fight, Wei and Pearl simply watched them.

"So which form are you going to use first?"

"How about that new one that I just developed?"

"You mean—"

"Yep. The stupidly weird looking one, as you put it."

"I don't get it. Why did you even try mixing that many weapons together?"

"I got bored!"

"You tried to make a weapon version of a Swiss army knife. I don't know if that's boredom or just plain stupid."

"…You know what Pearl, let's just go with double sword."

"Finally! Something I can agree with."

And with that, Pearl reached out to grab Wei's arm, which turned into a handle before both sides of the handle extended into blades.

Kilik looked over at them. "Are you two ready?"

Pearl only smiled. "Whenever you are."

Kim started the fight by use Jackie to throw a wave of fire at Pearl. Reacting quickly, Pearl spun Wei in a circle fast enough to ward off the flames. As the flames cleared, Kilik and Ox, appeared out of them, looking to take advantage of the distraction created by the flames. Pearl proceeded to use one end of her double sword to block Ox while using the other end as elevation to dodge Kilik's punch. As she got to the top of her jump, Wei turned into a hammer and this gave Pearl the chance to do a flip and bring Wei down on the back of Ox's head, knocking him out immediately. Harvar, who couldn't fight without his partner, decided to just give it up and sit the rest of the fight out.

As Pearl landed, Kilik jumped up, intent on smashing the Pots into her. Before the first fist could connect, Wei changed into a buckler, which Pearl used to block the hit before sliding under him and charging at Kim, who was finding a position for another shot.

Kim, who noticed Pearl charging at her, aimed Jackie and sent a blast of fire at Pearl. Noting that the blast was going to barely miss her, Pearl shifted a little bit to her left before continuing her charge at Kim. What she didn't notice was that Kilik had taken the opportunity with Kim's flame to enhance Fire's ability, absorbing it and sending an even larger wave of fire at Pearl from behind. Seeing no other way of avoiding the attack, Pearl brought Wei up in front of her as the two of them used their unique ability.

"Synchronized Souls!"

As Pearl had brought Wei up in front of her, a giant sphere of wavelength seemed to burst out of the two of them, deflecting everything before it disappeared. The moment the sphere disappeared, Pearl blocked Kilik's attempt to bring a double fist smash on top of her and reached to punch Kilik. What Kilik didn't see coming was that the moment Pearl's fist was about to make contact, Wei transformed into a gauntlet on the offending fist. The impact sent Kilik flying back, where when he landed he was out of commission. The most shocking thing about this wasn't the attack itself so much as it was the transition between weapon transformations. There was almost no time between switching forms. As Pearl turned towards Kim, Kim raised up her hands in surrender.

"I give up. You win."

—Line Break—

Maka's eyes widened in shock as she witnessed what was probably the most unique event she had ever seen when it came to souls.

"No way" she breathed.

Soul, who was right next to her, looked over. "What is it Maka?"

Maka was so speechless at the sight that Kid had to answer for her. "Their souls are completely synchronized. There is no difference between them."

Soul was somewhat confused. "Kid, what's the difference between resonating and synchronizing?"

Professor Stein, who saw this as an opportunity, explained to Soul. "Basically, their souls are the same now. Normally, resonance between souls is limited to how compatible the souls are. You can increase resonance rate through practice and training, like what most partners do. Synchronizing however, is in a sense a shortcut. I believe Mifune explained to you before how synchronizing souls makes it so that their moves, thoughts, and breaths are the same. As you've seen just now, it also allows almost instantaneous transformation between different weapon forms. Its greatest advantage though, is that it also removes every single compatibility issue between souls. In other words, perfect compatibility. There is in theory no limit to how much they can resonate."

Maka, who had finally regained her voice, voiced her thoughts. "So you mean that in theory, they can have unlimited power? And every single sibling duo in this family has had this ability?"

Stein chuckled a bit. "To answer your first question, yes. I don't know the answer to your second question though. You would be better off asking Mifune about that. He knows their family much better than pretty much everyone else right now, except maybe their own family."

As Soul and Maka looked back at the ring, she could see Wei and Pearl carrying Ox and Kilik off the ring, with Kim and their weapons following right behind them. As the Zhao siblings placed the two unconscious meisters on the ground, Pearl asked a question.

"So who's next?"

Everyone glanced around, looking at each other. No one wanted to fight the two of them at this point, until Maka's voiced popped up.

"Me."

Soul looked as his partner. "Oi, Maka, are you sure about this?"

Maka nodded. Turning to Pearl, she asked "Do you mind if we just try our techniques on you, to see how powerful the two of you can get?"

Pearl thought for a moment. "Ok!"

Wei sighed in relief. At least Pearl wasn't going to pummel more people into the ground. As Soul began to transform, Wei noticed Soul's weapon form and his eyes perked up.

"Oh a scythe. Do you mind if I absorb the weapon information first? I've never actually absorbed scythe information before."

Maka looked over at Soul, who nodded. As she reached the scythe out to Wei for him to touch, Wei closed his eyes and grasped the handle. A few moments later, Wei's eyes snapped open, and he handed Soul back to Maka.

Pearl looked over at her brother. "You want to try it out?"

Wei closed his eyes. "Give me a moment. Alright, weapon modified. Let's give it a try."

As Pearl grasped her brother's arm, he transformed into a scythe. What Soul and Maka noticed right away was that the scythe blade extended both directions, while there was also another, smaller blade on the other side of the scythe.

"Makes it easier to spin around" Pearl explained.

Maka nodded. It made sense. But another thought crossed her mind then. "Does that mean that Wei already has a scythe form?"

Pearl shook her head. "Other polearms, yes. Scythe, no. Wei just customizes his weapon forms to best fit the situation. So you going to go for your moves or no?"

Maka nodded and pulled Soul back behind her, concentrating. As the two of them resonated, Pearl and Wei suddenly felt something familiar before it disappeared.

"Wei..."

"Yeah, I know. But we can't be sure that she's back. For now, let's focus on this."

"You're right."

As Maka came at them with the Witch Hunter, Pearl started resonating with Wei, intercepting the Witch Hunter with an equally powerful technique. Maka, seeing that her technique had been matched, proceeded to increase her resonance rate with Soul, increasing their strength to the point where the Witch Hunter became the Genie Hunter. Pearl's eyes widened a bit.

"That's powerful." Pearl mused.

"Careful" Wei cautioned her "she can use the Kishin Hunter as well."

Pearl's eyes widened even more before returning to their original state. "How about we try resonating as far as possible?"

As Maka threw the Genie Hunter at them, Wei suddenly started glowing in the same way that Soul did whenever using a hunt technique. Spinning Wei around, Pearl swung him into Soul to intercept the Genie Hunter. The moment the two techniques collided, there was a large explosion, with both teams being thrown back a large distance.

Pearl brushed herself off. "So the technique itself isn't too hard to copy. It just needs a lot more power than we usually output."

As Maka started getting up, Pearl walked up to her and gave her a hand. "How about we call this a tie?"

The entire class could only express one thought.

"Eh?"

/

**This went on way longer than I wanted. Oh well. Guess it'll be ok.**

**I need a lot of work on my fight scenes. I'll probably work on improving that if I write another fanfic in the future. **


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:**

**Chapter 10!**

**One of the guests made a point that apparently the hunt-slash techniques were unique to Maka/her mother/Death. I did some research on that, and apparently the whole hunt-slash series is a line of techniques for scythe meisters, not just said people in question. I just assume that Maka/her mother's techniques are unique in that they also utilize an anti-demon wavelength, instead of just being a much more powerful hunt-slash. **

**And as for that presence that Wei and Pearl felt earlier, I may/may not reveal that in this chapter (I never edit author notes after I make them).**

Wei was lying down, taking a nap in the grass. It had been about four months since they had first come to DWMA. During that time, Pearl had made Wei a Death Scythe. The witch in question wasn't particularly powerful in Wei's mind, seeing as the most it had been able to pull off was a small blast of fire before slashed clean through the witch. While this technically allowed Wei and Pearl to graduate early if they wanted, the two of them wanted to just stay in school and graduate with the rest of the gang, which they had become very good friends with over these last few months.

The thing that really bothered Wei and Pearl though, was the presence that they felt during their duel with Maka. It wasn't very close by, but it was bothering enough that they had been somewhat wary this entire time. Despite this, they lived on their lives at the academy with their friends, building relationships and such.

One such friend was Maka, who had an insatiable lust for knowledge like he did. The two of them often found each other in the library, trying to find good books. There was a good reason that Wei was considered an intellectual prodigy, and part of that had to do with books. Because of this, Wei and Maka saw each other as rivals, along with Ox. The three of them now competed to get top scores in every single exam.

Kid was intriguing. It wasn't like Wei met a shinigami every other day, as there were none back in Washington. The two of them became good friends overnight, as it was discovered that Wei also held an appreciation for symmetry, though not to the point of obsession that Kid had.

Maka and Kid in particular were of interest to Wei. It wasn't often that you saw a shinigami actually form an attachment to someone. What interested him the most about them though, were their souls. While forging a relationship with a shinigami was already an interesting event in itself, the more interesting part of this was Maka's soul, a Grigori soul.

Wei had done a small research project on Grigori souls a couple of years back at his other school, but there had never been any good amount of material for him to look into, as most of what was said about the Grigori soul was that they were shaped like angels. That and apparently they could fly with the assistance of a Death Scythe.

He chuckled. Death falling in love with an angel. Who knew.

Speaking of angels, he knew he'd have to tell Maka about the whole flying thing later.

Kid's weapons, Liz and Patty, were also quite the friends. Probably the freakiest thing about Patty was her obsession with giraffe's and, he shuddered at the thought, breaking giraffe necks. Wei would never understand that girl.

Liz, on the other hand, seemed like the more mature person, although he found her fear of ghosts somewhat dumb. Her partner was a shinigami, and they dealt with soul collection all the time. Add that to the fact that she was in a school with people that could wield other people as weapons, and Wei couldn't find any logical reason for Liz's fear of ghosts.

Then there was Soul. Wei, Soul and Pearl connected almost instantaneously, given that the three of them loved music. While their preferred styles of music differed, it didn't stop them from being really good friends and occasionally having small jam sessions.

Black*Star was the somewhat… dense. Wei had him pinned as the paragon of all muscle, no brain. Which made it somewhat surprising that he had lived for so long. Other than that, Wei had fun on occasion playing sports with him, although he tended to avoid basketball just because of Pearl's godly skill in that game.

Tsubaki was the calm one in their group of misfits. While Wei had pegged her to be a compromising kind of person back when they first met, their first date had allowed him to see that there was more to her, such as a taste for vanilla ice cream, as well as an enjoyment for hiking. That and there was their promise to learn more about one another.

"I thought I might find you here."

Speaking of which, throughout these last few months, Wei and Tsubaki had gone on many more "Dates but not dates" as Pearl liked to call them. They'd learned many things about each other during this time, ranging from the small things like Wei's napping habits and Tsubaki's favorite origami to the bigger things like their love for children and cooking. They had been quite the dates. And while Wei could definitely say that he loved Tsubaki now, he didn't initiate anything because he was waiting for the right opportunity. Which, incidentally, came up just this month.

As Wei opened his eyes, he saw Tsubaki standing above him. He smiled. "Well, napping is one of my favorite pastimes."

"That and those phoenixes you just seem to love making." Tsubaki commented.

Wei shrugged. "What can I say? They're my favorite things to make."

Tsubaki smiled. "You know, I still have that one that you made all those months ago. That one from the first day you came to the academy."

Wei looked thoughtful for a moment. "That one was kind of an experiment. Weaving in an extra color is easy. I'd never added a small patch of color like that before so I wasn't sure how well that would work. Turns out, pretty well, seeing as you still have it."

Tsubaki blushed. Whether or not he knew it, Wei always had a way of doing that to Tsubaki. It was always the little things that built up, giving her more reason to love him. What had started out as a crush on what was a good-looking guy had turned into a genuine love for him, for all the little things that he did for her.

"But that aside, have you heard about the school dance coming up?" Wei asked.

A bit puzzled, Tsubaki nodded her head. "I heard a little bit about it. Apparently it's a formal dance. Why?"

Wei thought for a moment. "I was considering going."

Tsubaki giggled. "Doesn't seem like your kind of thing. You? Dressing up?"

Smiling a bit, Wei sat up. "I do enjoy going formal every once in a while. Besides, it's been a while since I last went dancing. I do need a bit of practice."

Still somewhat confused, Tsubaki pressed another question. "I thought we were going on that skiing trip that day."

Wei took a breath before getting up to his feet. "We'll go right after the dance. There was something else I had in mind first."

Taking a moment to compose himself, he took another breath and popped the question. "I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to this dance. Not just as a friend."

It took a moment for Tsubaki to register the question. "A-are you asking me out to the dance as your girlfriend? And not just a friend?"

Wei nodded.

Tsubaki's hands flew to her mouth, and her eyes started watering. This was the moment that she had waited for. For four months. To think that it was actually happening was a bit much for Tsubaki at that moment. And just like that she fainted.

—Line Break—

"Umm… Tsubaki?"

Tsubaki opened her eyes slowly, as she realized that it was now getting darker. As she sat up, she started talking to herself.

"Weird dream. Wei asked me out to the dance. As his girlfriend."

"Tsubaki. That wasn't a dream."

Snapped out of her thoughts, Tsubaki looked to see Wei next to her. All of a sudden, everything came rushing back to her and she realized what exactly Wei had asked.

"Are you alright?" Wei asked with a frown.

Tsubaki finally figured out what she was going to say.

"Yes."

Wei's frown disappeared as he sat back. "Well that's a relief."

"Wei."

"Hm—?!" Wei was completely unprepared for the pair of lips that sealed themselves around his own. Not sure how to respond, Wei just sat there as the kiss continued, before Tsubaki finally released it.

Wei's hand went to his mouth. "I've never actually been kissed there before."

"Neither have I." Tsubaki admitted. "It just felt natural."

"Well, how about we add another to the count?" Wei corrected.

And with that, Wei initiated the kiss. Tsubaki's eyes widened for a second before closing, enjoying the feeling that they felt from the kiss. A moment later though, they were rudely interrupted.

"What took you two so long?" Pearl's voice could be heard a short distance away from them. The two of them broke off the kiss, and looked in opposite directions, blushing madly. A little farther away, the two of them could also hear cries of "Finally!" and "It's about time" as the rest of their little gang showed up.

"Man, you guys took forever to get to this stage." Soul commented.

Black*Star pounded Wei on the back. "Don't go hurting my weapon now."

Wei chuckled. "Wouldn't even dream of it."

Maka smiled. Tsubaki was finally into the date-zone. No one really knew this, but often Tsubaki would feel down at night, wondering if she was ever going to get to that point where Wei said yes. Maka was starting to wonder if Wei even cared about Tsubaki's feelings until this moment. Thinking about it now, she should have expected Wei to wait until the dance was announced. People like him always waited for the really good moments to create lasting memories.

Meanwhile, Wei and Tsubaki were both growing somewhat uncomfortable with all the attention.

"So let me get this straight. Maka and Kid start dating and no one bats an eye. We start dating and all of a sudden everyone is bombarding us with attention." Wei summarized.

Liz sighed. "To be fair, Kid and Maka have known each other for longer than you two have. And for your information, Patty, Soul and I spent a good hour after that basketball game making plans to get the two of them together. The two of you, on the other hand, are a different story."

"Right. So you mind giving us some privacy?" Wei asked.

Liz's eyebrow went up in question before coming back down, understanding (maybe) where this was going.

"Alright then everyone. We're going now." Liz called. "Make sure to stay safe you two."

Tsubaki and Wei both nodded at this before realizing exactly what Liz was saying to them. "We're not going that far!" they both shouted at Liz before shutting up at the same time.

"So yeah, dance?" Wei asked.

Tsubaki looked down at her feet. "Well, I don't really know how to dance."

Wei's eyes perked up. "I could teach you a bit about dancing."

"Really?" Tsubaki's expression brightened at the suggestion.

He nodded. "I did take lessons when I was younger. Just never had the chance to put the practice to use. Here, let me show you a few things." He said, taking her hand.

—Line Break—

As Pearl was making dinner, her mother, who was visiting again after a business trip, was grilling her with questions about Wei and Tsubaki.

"So did they kiss yet?" Jade asked.

Pearl sighed. She hoped Wei would get home soon, so that her mother would start grilling him with questions instead of trying to get all of the information from her.

Almost on cue, the two of them heard the doorbell ring. Pearl frowned. Wei had a key, so there was no need for him to ring the doorbell. Which meant that this was someone else. Turning off the stove, she went to the door and opened it to the second most unexpected surprise she saw.

"Dad?" Pearl gaped.

Wen Da Zhao was an imposing man of sorts. While not as tall as his son, there was something about him that seemed to speak of his presence. Despite this, his enthusiasm was matched by none when meeting with old friends or family.

"Pearl! How has my daughter been doing?"

Pearl smiled a bit. She had always loved her father's attention, as he had always been the most encouraging member of their family.

"I've been doing well Dad. Wei and I have met so many friends here, and there's so much more material for us to learn from at this academy." She gushed.

"Speaking of your brother," Wen Da started, "where is he?"

Jade, who had been expecting Wen Da for a while, appeared behind Pearl. "I do believe our son is out on a date."

Wen Da raised his eyebrow. "Our son, on a date?" He questioned.

He looked at Pearl. "You finally let someone through your screening process?"

Pearl looked a tad bit abashed. "Umm, maybe?"

Shaking his head, Wen Da asked the more important question "Who's he going out with?"

Huffing a bit, Jade put her hands on her hips. "He says they're not actually dating, but they keep on going out together, trying to learn more about each other."

A bit frustrated with the lack to his answer, he pressed again. "Sounds like something Wei would do, but _who _is he going out with?"

"Oh, that. He's going out with Sanjuro's daughter, Tsubaki."

A dumbstruck expression found itself onto Wen Da's face. "Sanjuro. You mean as in Sanjuro Nakatsukasa, the man I consider my best friend. Our son is dating his daughter?"

Before Jade or Pearl could answer, a familiar voice could be heard right behind Wen Da.

"Umm, Dad? When did you get here?"

Everyone in the family spun around to see Wei at the door, sweating a little bit. Wen Da frowned at the sight. Wei almost never exerted himself to the point that he was sweating. And for him to come in like that meant that he had to have been doing something big.

"I got here just a few minutes ago. But never mind that, why are you sweating?" Wen Da asked.

Wei looked down at himself. "Oh yeah, I was teaching Tsubaki how to dance."

"So are you dating Sanjuro's daughter?"

Wei slowly nodded.

Jade started gushing. "Oh this is wonderful Wei! When did you finally ask?"

Pearl, feeling that she was finally free to talk again, piped up with the answer. "This afternoon! I saw them kissing in the park."

Wei sweatdropped as both Wen Da and Jade turned to him, and he could feel the power behind those gazes, promising tons of embarrassing questions for him.

"_Pearl, why do you keep doing this to me?"_

—Line Break—

"So Dad, what are you doing here?" Wei asked.

The family was sitting around the dinner table, eating food. Wei reminisced about the times that they had spent around the table when they were younger. It only seemed like yesterday that Pearl was refusing to eat her vegetables. He snapped out of his thoughts when he felt the mood around the table change.

Wen Da's expression grew serious. "You remember how aunt Ro and I were on a mission four months ago?"

Wei and Pearl nodded. "That was about the time that the two of us moved here. What was the mission about?"

"Your seal broke. She's back."

Wei and Pearl's eyes widened. "You mean what we felt—"

Wen Da nodded gravely. "Yes. Mo Ye is back."

Wei's brain went straight into strategy mode. "Can we seal her again?"

Wen Da shook his head. "Not without help. You're going to need a good team of people to do it."

Wei nodded. "I'll get to that then."

/

**Huh. So I did mention the presence (kind of).**

**I felt like a time-skip was in order. Otherwise there'd be way too much for me to write/keep track of. So yeah, there's that. **

**Welp, here's the great conflict/important event that every fanfic needs to have a purpose for the OC. Hope you enjoy this. **

**As always, R&R please.**

**Also of note: I didn't go back to edit any mistakes, so if you see some, PM me.**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:**

**More info on big bad villain. Here we go.**

Tsubaki walked into the classroom with a happy expression on her face. While it still took some time to adjust to the fact that Wei was officially her boyfriend, it was something she could definitely adjust to. As she looked around though, Wei and Pearl were nowhere to be seen. Normally, she would assume that they were on a mission, but ever since Wei became a Death Scythe, they'd left the lower level missions to other people, only taking on the really high-level missions. And they had already cleared out the high level missions for the month.

"Where's Wei?" Tsubaki asked.

Maka, who was reading a book, put it down before looking around. Not seeing Wei or Pearl, she frowned. It wasn't like them to be late. Ever. Despite the fact that they could both slack off if they wanted, their attendance was still perfect, excluding the days when they went on missions.

As she continued to ponder this, Kid appeared with Liz and Patty behind him, a grim expression on his face.

"Maka, Soul, Tsubaki," Kid said, "We need to head to the Death Room. Where's Black*Star?"

"YAHOO! Your god is—"

"Black*Star, we need to get to the Death Room now. Serious situation."

The mood in Black*Star was instantly followed by a serious silence, as he realized the potential severity of said situation.

While on the way to the Death Room, Tsubaki couldn't help but wonder where Wei was. Her question was answered when she and the rest of the gang stepped into the Death Room. Any happiness she had at seeing him though, disappeared upon seeing the grave expression on both his and Pearl's face.

Shinigami spoke up. "Hiya! Thanks for coming! We have another situation going on right now, so listen up."

Kid spoke before anyone else could say anything. "Father, what is this about? Is there another Kishin attack that's going to happen?"

Shinigami shook his head. "It's not that kind of situation. I'll let Wei explain the situation to you guys." He pulled out some chairs for everyone. "Have a seat, this might take a while."

After everyone sat down, Wei finally started talking. "How much do you guys know about the origins of demon weapons?"

Maka, having read up on the subject spoke first. "They were created by Arachne, right?"

Wei nodded. Before he could continue, Shinigami interjected. "Right! The designs for creating the first weapons were created by Eibon, and Arachne managed to find this information to create the first line of demon weapons."

Wei continued. "Technically, you're correct. Yes, the first demon weapons were created by Arachne. However, the Zhao line of weapons actually predates the creation of the demon weapons."

Everyone's eyes widened at this statement.

"How?" Soul asked.

Pearl answered the question. "Have you ever heard of the Chinese legend of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye?"

As the gang shook their head, Pearl continued. "Long before Shinigami-sama became the current Death, there was a swordsmith couple by the names of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. During that time, a king asked Gan Jiang to forge a pair of swords for him. To forge this, Gan Jiang collected a large amount of energy to fuel the forge. Despite this, the forge wasn't powerful enough to help create the kind of swords that he wanted. Mo Ye decided to help by throwing herself into the forge."

"She what?!"

Wei stopped them from getting out of hand. "The power you can get from a human soul is enormous. She literally powered the forge with her own soul. Either way, after she was consumed by the flame, Gan Jiang was able to forge the kind of swords fitting for a king. What he didn't expect was a certain quality of one of the swords."

Tsubaki gasped in realization. "One of the swords was Mo Ye."

Wei nodded. "Correct. Mo Ye was quite literally the first weapon in existence. Gan Jiang was unwilling to give his wife to the king, so he only gave him one of the swords. What ended up happening was he was executed and a search for the other sword happened. Obviously, they weren't able to find it, given that Mo Ye was, in all appearances, human. Their son though, Chi, was out for revenge after hearing what happened to his father."

"So he used Mo Ye." Soul guessed.

Nodding again, Wei continued. "Yes, he did. The king died. So did Mo Ye's son. However, by that time, a daughter had already been born to the son. That's where the Zhao family comes from. It's also how it became custom for our family to partner up as weapon and meister. This eventually turned into siblings becoming weapon and meister."

Pearl continued. "Here's where Wei and I had to start making guesses, since the legend ended with the deaths of Mo Ye's son and the king. During all the problems with the kishin, the two of us went to investigate some witches that were gathering suspiciously close to Mo Ye's tomb. We didn't know it was Mo Ye's tomb at the time, but what we saw was chilling. The witches were trying to revive her so she could aid them."

Maka was confused. "Revive her? How would they have revived her? Why would they want to revive her? Wouldn't she have technically been on DWMA's side?"

Pearl shook her head. "We confirmed one of our guesses when we got to the tomb. Mo Ye had a doublesoul."

"A doublesoul?" Liz asked.

"Two souls in a single body. Only happens once every number of generations, that sort of stuff. Essentially, you would have the power of both of those souls. You're still a single person, you just have two souls instead of one. One of Mo Ye's souls was a human soul. The other was a witch soul. Don't ask. We don't know how."

Maka's brain went into theorycrafting mode. "So when she threw herself in the fire, her witch soul was consumed to bond her human soul to the metal which eventually became the sword? But how would you know that she had a doublesoul then?"

Shinigami answered the question before Wei or Pearl could. "Doublesouls are unique in that if you lose one part of it, it can be restored if the other part is still there."

Wei and Pearl both nodded. "When we fought the witches, we killed all of them. What we didn't expect was that all of their souls fused together and went straight into the tomb. It turns out, Mo Ye wasn't dead. She was just asleep in her sword form. So the moment she absorbed the witch souls, she awakened. Not in a good mood either."

_Flashback_

_The moment Pearl cut through the last witch, Wei transformed back into human form. As they were about to grab the witch souls though, the souls suddenly merged together, before flying into the cave. Wei and Pearl followed, not wanting the souls to get away. _

_When they got into the cave, the first thing they saw was a tombstone with the words in Chinese saying "This is the resting place of Mo Ye. Disturb it at your own risk."_

_Wei and Pearl looked around, not seeing a tomb that might be a resting place. What they did notice though, was a Chinese sword that was resting in the middle of the room. The sword had extremely ornate patterns on the blade, unlike many swords they had seen before. _

_They observed the sword, seeing nothing special about it besides its pattern. Wei was about to go up to it to absorb information about it. Before he could, the fused witch souls dashed right past him, into the sword. The sword began to glow as Wei and Pearl realized that it was a demon weapon and stepped back._

_As the sword transformed into a woman, Wei and Pearl stood, transfixed. Completing her transformation, she stood up. Her appearance was almost humble, with clothes like those of a commoner's wife back in the old days of China. What stood out to the siblings though, was her face. Beautiful, thin, and almost timeless in nature. _

_The woman looked around, taking in her surroundings before her gaze landed on the Zhao siblings. _

"_Who are you?" were the first words to come out of her mouth._

_Wei and Pearl shuddered. The voice was almost sinister, dark in nature. _

_The woman's expression turned arrogant. "I said, who are you?"_

_Finally finding his voice, Wei spoke first. "My name is Wei. This is my sister Pearl. May I ask who you are?"_

_Taking her first step forward, the darkness around the woman seemed to grow for a moment before shrinking down to almost nothing. "I am Mo Ye. The first weapon. Tell me, Wei, Pearl, what are you doing here?"_

_Wei almost forgot his manners for a second as the information hit him. THE Mo Ye. The first weapon to come into existence. The progenitor. It was almost a surreal moment for him._

_Pearl finally found her voice. "We were hunting some witches when their souls fused together, came into this cave, and well, went into you."_

_Mo Ye looked at the siblings for a moment, before the dark aura encompassing her before rushed back out again. She threw her head backwards and started laughing an almost insane laughter._

"_So," she said, head snapping back to attention. "My brethren finally find the nerve to revive me, the most powerful of us. Yes, my dears" she said, in response to their startled faces. "I am a witch, as well as a weapon. But that's not the most interesting thing here, no. You two… yes, you two are Chi's descendants. There is no doubt about the resemblance. Which means that the two of you are my descendants as well. What a chance meeting, finding two of my own family here to greet me when I finally awakened from the trap that Death set up for me."_

"_Wait, you were trapped? By Death?"_

_Mo Ye nodded. "Confined by Death because I thought to use human souls to increase my strength. To protect my family! But even though Death wanted to take my soul, he couldn't. I was too strong for him. He had to trap me by forcing me into sleep in this cave."_

_Wei was shocked. "You consumed human souls, all to make yourself stronger?"_

"_It was necessary to protect my family! I would not let my grandchildren fight off the empire by itself."_

_Pearl shook her head. "Sorry to break it to you, but we've been fending for ourselves very well. What you did was wrong. I'm sorry to do this so soon after you wake up, but we have to put you down. You're too much of a risk to people."_

_As Pearl said this, she stretched out her hand and Wei jumped into it, transforming into a halberd, which Pearl pointed at Mo Ye._

_Mo Ye chuckled. "I suppose it was too much, expecting my family to believe me when I told them that I did it for them. Did you know? Chi's daughter turned against me in the same way. Protecting my family was my original reason for consuming souls, yes. But now? I simply wish to see the world burn for the suffering it has caused me. It merely seems unfortunate that you got in my way. Such a pity too. I was hoping to elicit some form of assistance from my family. I guess your souls are just two more for me to take. They'll certainly assist in making me much more powerful."_

_With that, Mo Ye stretched out her hands as flames began to circle around them._

"_Come." She said. "Allow me to show you what power the progenitor of your family possesses."_

_As she prepared her attack, Pearl closed her eyes, before they flashed open again._

"_Synchronized Souls!"_

As Wei finished recounting the tale, everyone sat in silence.

"What happened to Mo Ye after the two of you fought?" Kid asked.

"We used our ultimate resonance technique." Pearl said. "We managed to seal her while using it, but it was only a temporary fix. Our family hoped that the seal would last much longer than it did. She broke it."

"So what are we waiting for?" Black*Star asked. "Let's get over there and beat her down for good."

Pearl shook her head. "She'll be more powerful the next time we face her. The only reason we managed to seal her that time was because she had just woken up. What we need is you guys to get stronger now so you can help us either seal her again or put her down for good."

Soul raised his eyebrow. "Why don't you ask one of the Death Scythes or Stein to help?"

"Because you guys were the ones that fought against Asura. That and we're going to get you guys to Death Scythe level if we can." Wei said.

Soul's eyes widened. Becoming a Death Scythe. He looked over at Maka. Maka's eyes only held grim determination in them. While it was Maka's dream to make Soul a Death Scythe, the situation they were in called for a more serious attitude, instead of the enthusiastic attitude that she would have otherwise shown.

"One last thing Wei." Maka said. "You're already a Death Scythe, so shouldn't you and Pearl have more power for beating Mo Ye?"

Wei shook his head. "Pearl and I only managed to seal Mo Ye the first time because we managed to catch the smallest of openings. By ourselves, we'd never catch that opening again. But enough about that. Death Scythe stuff now. We have about one month. We need to get your soul collection done really quickly, as well as some other training."

Turning to Shinigami, Wei asked "Do you have any missions that they could take to collect a bunch of kishin eggs at once? And maybe a couple of witch souls?"

Shinigami clapped his hands together. "I think I have just the missions for you guys. Get ready, because you're not going to get that much of a break for a while."

/

**So yeah, huge filler stuff. **

**Some of you may have noticed the story part was based off the real Chinese legend of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. I simply took that material and fiddled around with it to make a story that made sense for this fanfic. It was mostly a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. I just thought "Oh this could be great" and went with it.**

**There are two versions of the forging of the swords in Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. One is that the couple cut their hair and nails, and threw it into the fire to make it stronger. The other is that Mo Ye threw herself into the fire to make it stronger. **

**What always follows is the story of the king executing Gan Jiang. As seen, I decided to utilize more of the 2nd version. **

**So yeah, as always, R&R.**

**XWX**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:**

**Woo more filler stuff. (Kinda)**

"Genie Hunter!"

Maka cut through that tried to blast her away. As the witch disappeared, her soul was all that was left. Taking the soul, Soul consumed it, finally achieving Death Scythe status.

"Huh. We did it. Finally." Soul said.

"You don't seem as excited as you might be." Maka noticed.

Soul sighed. "Mostly for two reasons. First reason is we could've gotten to this point a long time ago if not for Blair. Second is that we're in something of a serious situation."

Maka nodded. "Let's go home."

—Line Break—

"Oh good. You're a Death Scythe now." Wei noted.

"Was there something else you wanted to talk to us about Wei?" Maka asked.

Wei nodded. "How would you two like to learn how to fly?"

Maka and Soul gaped at Wei. "Fly? Both of us?"

Wei scratched his head. "Well, it'll be more like you use Soul to fly."

Maka was confused. "What do you mean?"

"Umm… Maka, you can use your soul to create wings on Soul, allowing the two of you to fly around."

Soul was confused. "Maka can use her soul to do that?"

Wei facepalmed. "Have you never seen Maka's soul?"

Soul got a bit irritated. "I don't have soul perception. And I don't think Maka has ever bothered to look at her own soul."

Wei held up his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. I'm just saying. Maka has a Grigori soul. They're super rare, shaped like angels, and they can be used to fly with the assistance of a death scythe. At least it's easier with a death scythe."

Maka frowned. "So pretty much you're saying that by utilizing my soul and Soul (That sounds weird), I can fly?"

Wei nodded. "This requires a lot of weapon shape manipulation, something I'm not exactly an expert in ("But you do it all the time when you're fighting" thought Maka and Soul), as well as flying training. Something that I have absolutely no experience in, so I asked a couple of people who were more of experts on the fighting and weapon form manipulation to help. Have fun!" He said waving as he walked off. "Oh and Maka, try not to kill the expert among them."

Maka's frown deepened at that statement. "What could he mean by that?"

Soul, on the other hand, realized exactly why Wei had said exactly what he did. His guesses were confirmed when he saw four people walking up to them. Kim and Jackie he figured Wei would ask, due to their experience in flying. The other two were Death Scythes. One of them was Marie, which made sense. She was a patient teacher who could be encouraging. The other one though…

Soul could feel the animosity emanating from Maka as she saw the person that she considered the most detestable, horrific man in the world. A man so vile that even his presence was enough to piss Maka off. Her father.

"MAKAAAAAAA"

"MAKA CHOP!"

"_I'm going to chop Wei the next time I see him."_

—Line Break—

Wei figured he had gained enough distance from Maka to change from a fast walk to a slow walk. While he hadn't seen the Maka Chop for himself, stories of it from Tsubaki and Soul had been enough for him to actively avoid pissing Maka off.

"Something bothering you?"

Wei looked to his left to see Kid looking at him in askance. He shook his head. "Not really. It's more of I think I just avoided a catastrophe. In the form of a chop."

Kid scrutinized Wei, trying to figure out the meaning behind his words until it hit him. Having dated Maka for the last couple of months, he could understand a few reasons why Maka would want to chop someone. He sighed.

"What did you do?"

Wei scratched his head in response. "You remember I told you about how Maka and Soul had the ability to fly if Soul was able to become a Death Scythe? Well I asked some people to help them in learning how to fly. One of the guys I asked may have been a rather unlikable person in the eyes of Maka."

Kid was confused. "That doesn't make sense. In the eyes of Maka…" Kid's eyes widened as he realized exactly what Wei was talking about. "You didn't."

"Unfortunately, yes. I pulled Spirit out to help Maka. Mainly because he had more experience with the transformation stuff than most of the current Death Scythes. Yes, I know how much Maka hates him, but yeah. It's their best learning chance. Assuming that Maka doesn't kill him."

Kid shook his head. "You might want to run fast if she sees you. I've seen her chops in person, and they are easily the most dangerous things that some of us have to put up with."

Wei raised his eyebrow in question. "How dangerous?"

Kid responded by pulling out a photo of Soul right after he was victimized by a chop. The response he received was unexpected. Kid never knew Wei's eyes could get that huge.

"How is Soul still alive?" Wei asked.

Kid shrugged. He wasn't sure how anyone survived the Maka Chop. That thing put a dent in people's heads and they would be fine afterwards, minus the potential brain damage. On occasion, Kid suspected that they were simply in an anime or a manga, and were thus subject to its laws of physics, something that was a slight bit disconcerting (A/N: I had to, I'm sorry). His thoughts were interrupted by an aura of vengeance that was approaching slowly. Feeling that Wei deserved at least a little vengeance (he promised himself that he would apologize later), he decided to distract him.

"Wei, why are you wearing that necklace? It's so asymmetrical that my eyes hurt looking at it."

While Wei still wanted to know how people survived the Maka Chop, he figured that Kid was probably distracted at the moment and couldn't respond properly. He sighed and unlinked his necklace, removing the charm that was bothering Kid and replacing it with a more simple and symmetrical charm.

"There, better?" Wei asked.

Kid nodded. "By the way, I would watch out just about now."

Wei was confused. "What do you me—"

"MAKA CHOP"

—an? … that was low, Kid."

Kid shrugged. "You brought it upon yourself. And I'm not saying no to my girlfriend if it comes to well-deserved vengeance."

Maka brightened up a bit a reached to give Kid a kiss on the cheek, before looping her arm around his and walking off, leaving Wei in the ground.

"See you later Wei!"

"…"

Kid turned to Maka. "Did you at least learn how to fly before beating up your dad?"

Maka scratched the back of her head. "Kind of. Soul and I managed about five seconds before we crashed."

Kid smiled. "You'll master it soon. You always do."

Yet another reason Maka knew that dating Kid was the right choice.

—Line Break—

Soul walked down the street, wondering where his meister went. All he knew was that she went down this direction. He stopped for a moment when he saw Tsubaki looking around.

"Tsubaki, are you looking for something?" He asked.

Somewhat startled, Tsubaki turned around to see Soul looking at her. She sighed. "Yeah. I'm looking for Wei. I haven't seen him since Black*Star and I left for that mission, so I'm not sure where he might be."

Soul paled. Noticing the change in Soul's face, Tsubaki started worrying. "Did something happen to him?" She demanded.

Soul shook his head. "He's not dead if that's what you're asking. Although he's probably in trouble. He might just have royally pissed off Maka."

Tsubaki frowned. "What did he do?"

"Well, he met up with us the moment we got back. Gave us a few pointers for some special training before leaving. He asked some guys to help us with it. One of those guys was Maka's dad."

All the blood drained out of Tsubaki's face. "But that doesn't make sense. I just saw Maka a few moments ago, and she was walking with Kid, all happy. You don't think…"

Soul's face lost all remaining color that it had as he came to the same conclusion as well. "She got him." Getting out of that thought, Soul shook his head to get some color back. "We might as well find Wei if we can. I'm pretty sure this is his first experience with the chop and his resistance probably isn't built up yet."

Tsubaki nodded. "Let's go find him."

They found him a moment later, after retracing Maka and Kid's steps. Wei's face was planted in the ground, the injury from Maka's attack slowly recovering.

"Wei, are you ok?" Tsubaki asked, somewhat frantic.

The only response that the two of them got was a single thumb sticking up as he said "I'm ok. Kinda."

He finally managed to pull his face out of the ground. "Geez Soul, how do you survive these all the time?"

Soul shrugged. He didn't know. All he could say was that he was used to it at this point.

"I guess I'll leave you two alone for now. I have to go catch up with someone right now." Soul said, leaving Tsubaki and Wei to themselves.

Wei finally recovered enough to stand up, noticing Tsubaki's small smile.

"That must have been quite the experience. Feeling the Maka Chop." Tsubaki said.

Wei sighed. "I'll try not to piss Maka off again" he promised. "But that aside, how have you been? I haven't seen you since you and Black*Star went on that mission."

Tsubaki's eyes brightened, happy to see that Wei was still the considerate boyfriend even in the more serious times. It was one of his qualities that she really love about him. It wasn't as often that people showed as much concern for her. Most of the time, their attention was directed at either someone else or themselves. Up to this point, the only exception to this was her family. Since Wei and Pearl arrived in Death City though, it felt like more people had focused their attention on her. While Tsubaki wasn't always one for attention, she appreciated it when it came from someone that cared a lot about her.

Taking his hand, Tsubaki pulled Wei with her towards the closest Deathbucks. Wei understood. They could do all the talking they wanted over there.

—Line Break—

"So…" Maka started, "How's your soul collection coming along?"

Kid grimaced. "Not as well as I hope. It's not that Patty, Liz and I are having trouble with collecting the souls. It's more of the fact that most of the witches said to be causing havoc have managed to sneak away from me."

Maka raised her eyebrow. "Sneak away how?"

He sighed, somewhat embarrassed to explain what happened. "They keep on setting up asymmetrical figures close to their meeting sites. I can't stop adjusting them. The moment I do, it triggers an alarm and they get away."

Maka giggled a bit. "Of course the witches would use that method to get away from you."

Kid smiled, before looking forward again. The two of them didn't know where they were going at the moment, but it didn't really matter that much to them. The two of them knew every single street in Death City, having lived in the city for years on end. It would be almost fair to say that they could navigate anywhere within the city from anyplace.

"Hey Kid,"

"Yeah Maka?"

Maka looked over at him. "Do you think we could go to the school library? I need to go read up some things on weapons and souls."

As they walked to the school library, a piece of paper fell out of Kid's pocket. Noticing it, Kid stopped for a moment and picked it up, opening it to see Wei's crisp handwriting.

_Kid,_

_There's this place that has been bothering me for a while. Could you come with me and Pearl to investigate it? Bring Liz and Patty also. You'll probably need them. I'll gather up everyone else as well._

_Meet at 8 outside the city._

_-Wei_

Kid frowned. What could it be that bothered Wei? At least they were meeting up at a symmetrical time.

He sighed. He could all the answers he needed later when it mattered. He showed the message to Maka, who frowned as she read the message.

"What could be bothering him? Could it be something to do with Mo Ye?"

Kid thought for a moment. "It probably is. There hasn't been anything that's been able to bother him since I've first met him. Well, maybe except for the question of how to ask out Tsubaki."

Maka smiled for a moment. "They really do make a good couple."

Kid could only agree. "They do. Should we get to the library now?"

—Line Break—

Maka sifted through the shelves, trying to find some books about weapon history. She figured if they could figure out how Mo Ye was trapped the first time, they would be able to learn more about how to defeat her. While she had found plenty of books regarding the history of weapons in general, there was almost nothing on the weapons that were made before Arachne.

"Maka, I found something that we could look at."

Turning over to Kid, Maka saw him holding an old book. "What's the book called?"

Kid just handed the book over to Maka, who gasped when she read the title. _The History of the Zhao Family, the Most Ancient Weapon Bloodline_ by Sima Qian.

"How did you find this?" Maka asked.

"I checked in the high-priority library catalog to see if there was anything on the Zhao family. This was the first thing that popped on the list."

Climbing down from the ladder she was on, Maka and Kid sat down at a table and opened the book.

_The Zhao family reaches all the way back to the time of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, the legendary blacksmith couple who lived during the Spring and Autumn Period of ancient China. During this time, Gan Jiang was commissioned to make a sword for the king. As the time of delivery came near, Gan Jiang feared that he would not be able to forge the swords on time, as the fire was not powerful enough to forge the metal. _

_Mo Ye, fearing for her husband's safety, threw herself into the fire to strengthen it to the point where Gan Jiang could forge the metal. She told her husband "we can meet again" before throwing herself in._

_Tearfully, Gan Jiang created a pair of swords from the forge powered by his wife's soul. Unexpectedly, his wife appeared before him after he finished the swords, being one of the swords that Gan Jiang forged._

_Gan Jiang, unwilling to give his wife to the king, only gave one of the swords, the male sword, to the king. The king was outraged, knowing that Gan Jiang possessed a sword that was equal to the sword that he was given, and executed Gan Jiang._

Maka continued reading the book, while Kid went into the depths of the library again, trying to find more material on the Zhao family. When he was unsuccessful in finding anything else, he went back to where Maka was, only to find her staring wide-eyed at a single page.

"What is it?" Kid asked.

Maka merely slid the book over to Kid, pointing to that same page. Kid scanned over the page, eyes widening when he saw what was on the page.

/

**Audible gasp! What did Maka and Kid see in the book? I honestly don't know. Haven't planned it out yet. Welp, tune in next chapter.**

**Response to Caizen, who put in the most random thing for a review: Lol no. XiaoWeiXiao is on Team Impulse. Not Liquid. He's actually my favorite player, and all my other regular usernames that I use for websites were already taken. Hence, the username XiaoWeiXiao.**

**As for why I'm not going into more detail on the whole flying lesson thing, I just imagined it to be somewhat similar to chapter 62 of the manga (I think it's 62. I'm not completely sure. It's definitely somewhere around there). **


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:**

**Chapter 13! (13 is my favorite number)**

**So yeah, this is pretty much a continuation of what Maka and Kid were looking at earlier in the library.**

_After the death of both Mo Ye's son Chi and the king, Mo Ye took the male sword and bonded Gan Jiang's soul, which had been kept by the king, to the sword, using the soul of a witch that she and Chi had captured earlier. It was her dream that she and Gan Jiang be reunited. And what better way to do it than to give him life once again?_

_Before they could reunite as a couple though, they were separated, with one of the king's most loyal subordinates, Wu Zixu, stealing away Gan Jiang before he could adjust and transform into his human form. Enraged by the loss of her husband yet again, Mo Ye swore vengeance upon the land and started collecting human souls, seeking to take everything away from the dynasty the same way they had taken everything from her._

_What happened to Gan Jiang after his capture is unknown. However, there are rumors that the sword was returned to its forge, where it was created. Other people say the sword was broken down, and Gan Jiang died with the sword. The only person who knows for sure what happened to Gan Jiang though, is Wu Zixu. And after stealing away Gan Jiang, he disappeared from history._

Maka and Kid stared at that bit of text, the possibilities running through their minds.

"So if we could find Gan Jiang" Maka started.

"We might be able to stop Mo Ye's rampage on all of humanity." Kid finished.

"That or if you found Gan Jiang's body or grave, you'd piss off Mo Ye even more and give her more fuel to go on a rampage."

Maka and Kid turned to find Pearl walking over to them with Soul right behind her.

"Soul said you would probably be here since we couldn't find you at your apartment." Pearl said. "You got Wei's message?"

Kid nodded. "Where are we going?"

Pearl paused for a moment before replying. "There's a city in China by the name of Suzhou. Some rumors said that Zixu fled to somewhere around there with the Gan Jiang sword."

Maka let that sink in for a moment. "So we're going to look for the Gan Jiang sword. After you told us that it could potentially be a very bad idea."

Pearl nodded. Before she could say anything else though, Maka interrupted. "By the way, why are you with Soul right now?"

At that moment, the room went so silent that even a deaf person would hear a pin drop.

"…Soul, are you two—?" Maka began asking, before Pearl interrupted.

"Please don't give Wei any wrong impressions. We're not dating, I just figured it'd be faster if I got Soul to come along so we'd leave the city faster."

While Maka felt that the dynamic between those two wasn't that simple, she wasn't about to question what Pearl said.

Pearl continued on, as if the last few awkward moments hadn't happened. "We're still looking for it because, while it might piss off Mo Ye if we confirmed his death, Wei can still absorb the Gan Jiang sword information. The twin swords were known as the greatest masterpieces of their time for a reason, after all."

Maka and Kid supposed that it would help. Putting the book back on its shelf, Kid walked out of the library with everyone else.

"Well then, let's go find ourselves a sword." Kid said.

—Line Break—

While this was happening, Wei and Tsubaki were idly chatting away at Deathbucks. It had become a near-daily routine for them. Meeting up at Deathbucks followed up by a walk around the city, ranging from places like ice cream shops to parks. While they hadn't been able to go on dates as frequently, given the current situation, it didn't stop the two of them from enjoying time together.

Before the two of them got up though, Wei noticed a familiar figure.

"Mifune-sensei! How are you doing?"

Mifune couldn't help but smile at Wei. "It's been more than six years since I taught you and Pearl, and you still haven't stopped calling me that."

Wei scratched the back of his head in a small bout of embarrassment. "Sorry, old habits die hard."

"Well, that habit might need to die sooner than later. You and Pearl have already surpassed me as it is." Mifune said. "By the way, your parents are here."

Wei's eyes widened for a moment. "Wait, so who specifically is here?"

Mifune couldn't help but have a small laugh at Wei's expense. His old student may have loved his parents above everyone but his sister, but that didn't stop him from trying to avoid the inevitable embarrassments that came from his parents' teasing.

"They're actually here because you need someone to drive your group to the station later. And don't worry about the embarrassing stuff, they're not here to do that." He said.

"I doubt that." Wei muttered.

Tsubaki was confused. "We're going to a station later?"

Mifune facepalmed. "Wei, how did you forget to tell your girlfriend?"

Wei tried to clear things up. "I was going to tell her later, I just wanted to enjoy the date first."

Turning to Tsubaki, he explained "We're actually leaving the city tonight for China. There's a couple of places that I want to go looking for some stuff. China's dangerous at the moment mostly because Mo Ye is there, so Pearl and I need some backup just in case we run into her or her minions."

Tsubaki could understand why Wei might need the help. After hearing his description of Mo Ye, she didn't think that they could do anything against her by themselves. There were two things that bothered her though.

"Minions?"

Wei hesitated for a moment, not sure how to describe it. "Mo Ye doesn't just collect human souls. She uses them to create weapons loyal to her."

That question answered, Tsubaki asked the other question that was bothering her. "Why don't we just take a plane to go to China directly?"

Wei started explaining. "Well first, we need to be at a closer destination in order to fly to China. Which is why we're going on the station to go to Seattle. Second," he paused for a moment and looked at the ground, unwilling to mention the second reason.

"Wei gets airsick really easily. He only willingly goes on planes if there's no other route available to him." Mifune explained.

"Yeah that."

Tsubaki was confused. "How did you travel the world then?"

Wei raised his hands up in surrender. "Pearl and I took two plane trips to travel pretty much everywhere. The large majority of the trips were cars, trains, or other forms of transportation. Boats included. The plane rides though…" Wei shuddered. He got so woozy from those trips that he couldn't even form a coherent thought. It was only the planes too. Any other form of air travel was perfectly fine to him. He just couldn't understand why planes bothered him so much.

Tsubaki was somewhat interested in this little fact. While she did love envisioning Wei as the perfect person, it was also nice remembering that he was as human as the rest of them, with all the same kinds of flaws and such.

"Are the plane trips really that bad?" she asked.

Wei merely grumbled to himself while Mifune had another small chuckle. "I think it'd be best if you saw it for yourself instead of asking. But continue on. Enjoy your date."

With that he walked off, humming a small tune to himself.

Tsubaki walked over. "Um, Wei?"

"Hm? Oh yeah, right." Wei snapped back into focus. "So what now? Want to go for some ice cream?"

Tsubaki thought for a moment before shaking her head. "I think I want to go hiking today."

Wei tilted his head a bit in askance. It wasn't often that Tsubaki disagreed with one of his suggestions. When she did though, they still enjoyed it, so it wasn't a loss.

She explained. "I had some earlier before I went looking for you."

Oh. That explained it. Wei smiled a bit before taking her hand. "Let's go hiking then."

—Line Break—

"Where are Wei and Tsubaki?" Maka asked.

The group had finally met up outside the city at 8, where they were supposed to wait before they left for the station. What had bothered them though, was that Wei and Tsubaki were nowhere to be seen.

"Maybe they're somewhat busy?" Soul suggested.

Kid shook his head. "Wei's almost as much of a perfectionist as I am. He prefers being exactly on time. Something else must have come up."

Liz's eyes took on an almost mischievous look. "Something, huh? Wei and Tsubaki aren't here, Wei is never late, the two of them haven't seen each other in a while," Her seemed to have that evil twinkle that most anime characters have when they plan something diabolical. "Looks like I'll have to get some of the juicy little details from them later."

"What's so juicy about a hike and watching a sunset?" Wei asked, as he and Tsubaki made it to the meeting point.

Her mood deflated by Wei's sudden appearance, Liz quieted down, sulking because she couldn't have any good details.

Kid asked Wei a question that was bothering him the moment he saw that Wei was late. "Where were you? You're usually on time."

Wei shrugged. "I may have lost track of the time for a bit."

Pearl interjected. "Wei, you know that's BS. You always figure the exact time it takes to go from one place to another down to the second. What were you doing?"

Wei sighed. His sister knew him way too well. Kind of like the same way he knew her way too well. "I went over to check with Mom and Dad, see where they were, and confirm that they knew where to pick us up. Next thing I know, they're grilling me with a ton of questions about how things are going and that kind of stuff."

Pearl blanched for a second. "Mom and Dad are here?"

Wei nodded. They both knew the kinds of embarrassing stories that their parents had, and neither sibling was very keen on letting everyone hear them.

Before they could continue remembering why they feared their parents so much, Maka asked them a question. "Hey Pearl, do you think you and Wei could try and go full power?"

Looking at Maka, the siblings were confused. "Why do you ask?"

"Up to this point, all we've seen is your ability to mimic tons of other people's techniques. Not always perfectly, but you do a ridiculously good job. I'm just wondering, do the two of you have anything truly unique to yourselves?"

Pearl thought for a moment. "I suppose that's a fair question. And yeah, we do have something VERY unique to ourselves."

Everyone was confused. "What do you mean by very?"

Wei sighed. "Let's just show them Pearl. They might as well know."

"Ok."

Pearl reached her hand out to Wei, who grabbed her hand. Like all times before, Wei started transforming into a weapon. What no one expected though, was that Wei stayed as a glowing ball of energy. Holding the ball of energy close to her, Pearl's eyes snapped open.

"Synchronized Souls!"

Watching this process was somewhat disconcerting to Maka once again. The way their souls merged together was disorienting for everyone who could see the souls. What was new to her was that the siblings didn't stop there.

"Soul Resonance!"

The sight that followed was amazing to everyone. A bunch of balls of energy spread out everywhere and formed into more than fifty different weapons, before landing in a widespread area around Pearl, not unlike Mifune's Infinite Sword style. The ball of energy in her hands formed into another weapon as well, a katana.

"This," Pearl said "is Weaponmaster First Level, the base of our resonance techniques."

Maka and Kid just stood there, awestruck.

Their weapons looked over at them. "Something wrong?" Soul asked.

Kid just gaped while Maka found her voice. "All those weapons are Wei. They all have a piece of his soul."

Soul looked at his meister. "What?"

Pearl nodded. "You're right. At Weaponmaster First Level, the two of us can mix together weapons in a giant variety of attacks, not unlike Mifune-sensei's Infinite Sword style. But this is just the base of Weaponmaster. It's not even the techniques."

Maka was confused. "What do you mean?"

Her question was answered seconds later when all of a sudden the weapons started moving by themselves, floating into the air before pointing themselves at the group. Pearl's only motion during this being her outstretched left hand.

"Anyone want to try for a spar right now?"

Black*Star, never one to back down from a challenge, volunteered right away. As he charged at Pearl, all of a sudden the weapons started raining themselves down on Black*Star, who had to start dodging left and right in order to avoid getting stabbed, slashed, or bludgeoned by the wave of weapons.

"First Art: Blade March."

When all the weapons finally stopped raining down, Black*Star finally found a chance to charge at Pearl. As he got close though, Tsubaki suddenly shouted to him. "Black*Star, behind you!"

Black*Star barely avoided getting impaled by the wave of weapons coming at him from behind, as the weapons suddenly started circling Pearl.

"Second Art: Dancer's Prelude."

From what everyone could see, the Zhao siblings' technique was a ball of weapons that continually circled around Pearl. Black*Star simply observed the attack, not seeing any openings. Before he could make any more analyses though, Pearl suddenly charged at him, the weapons spinning around her even faster so it was almost like she was a ball of blades.

"Third Art: Blade Waltz."

Before Black*Star was about to take the Blade Waltz in the face, Pearl suddenly stopped and Wei transformed back into a single person. They stood still for a second before both of them collapsed.

"Wei!"

"Pearl!"

Tsubaki and Soul ran up to Wei and Pearl, checking to see if they were ok. When they saw that the siblings had just fallen asleep, they sighed in relief.

"Should've guessed that would happen. They do get exhausted after using Weaponmaster twice in a day."

Everyone turned around to see Jade and Wen Da Zhao sitting in a bus/car hybrid.

"Well come on now, you need to get to the station if you want to catch the train to Seattle." Jade said.

Wen Da sighed. "Right, come along now. I'll carry Pearl and Wei into the car."

/

**I'M SORRY!**

**I had this terrible case of writer's block for almost a week, so I wasn't sure where to go with what I wrote.**

**Either way, updated now, so yeah.**

**Same stuff as always, R&R**

**See you next chapter!**

**XWX**


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:**

**14 chapters and going strong (kinda). And holy moly my errors in chapter 13 are ugly. I'll probably go back and edit them later.**

Tsubaki looked at the two siblings napping in the row behind her and sighed.

Wei and Pearl had really outdone themselves this time around. The two of them managed to tire themselves out just before they were supposed to get in the car just from using Weaponmaster. And as the Zhao parents explained, Weaponmaster would tire out the siblings to the point of exhaustion if used more than once in a day.

As of the moment though, the gang was in the car/bus hybrid, either relaxing or just thinking on different things. Maka in particular was asking Wen Da about the Zhao family's special ability.

"So does every single meister/weapon duo in your family have the ability to synchronize?" Maka asked.

Wen Da confirmed it. "Each and every single one. Of which right now it's just me and my sister and Wei and Pearl."

Maka looked back at Wei and Pearl, who were currently sleeping on each other's shoulders. She smiled. They were a really adorable pair of siblings when they were asleep like that. Before she could go on appreciating the site (creep), she remembered a question that she had meant to ask Wei all those months ago.

"So Professor Stein told us that synchronizing allows for perfect compatibility, which meant that in theory your resonating could go up infinitely. Does every team in your family have that capability?" She asked.

Jade chuckled. "She certainly is an inquisitive child. Stein was always able to craft theories on the fly after observing something once."

Wen Da answered Maka's question. "In theory, you're right. Every single team in our family has the ability to get to that point. However, Wei and Pearl are actually the first in generations to bring themselves to that level of power. While it is easier for siblings to synchronize, it still takes a mix of talent and effort to perfect synchronizing. Wei and Pearl are easily some of the most talented children I have ever seen, and they're also the hardest working too."

"Sometimes I wish they weren't so talented in everything they put their mind to." Jade lamented. "It makes all of their achievements seem kind of regular after a while. Especially all of Wei's awards that he got from music."

Wen Da chuckled. "He certainly is more talented in that area than any other one I can think of. Except academics. You'd have to have the brain of a genius to beat him in a battle of wits. Speaking of which," he said, turning over to Maka, "I hear you've been giving him a run for his money in the classroom?"

Somewhat intimidated, Maka leaned back a bit before speaking. "Umm, kind of. It's more like we're in competition for every single test that we take. I've never actually scored higher than him because we always get perfect."

The Zhao family patriarch smiled. "You're doing a really good job then. I don't think I ever saw Wei as excited as when he found out he had serious competition in the brains department. I've never seen his letters sound so excited before. But that aside, have any of you ever heard Wei sing before?"

Everyone in the car just looked confused. Apparently, no one had ever heard Wei's voice before. Tsubaki remembered something though.

"I've heard him hum before, but that's not the same thing is it?"

Before anyone else could say anything, Pearl's voice popped up. "Nope, Wei actually gets ridiculously shy when he has to sing. Humming he's fine with because it's more quiet."

Everyone turned to look at Pearl, who had finally woken up. Sensing that they wanted to know why she had woken up and not Wei, she explained. "Wei and I may be synchronized when we use our techniques, but it's pretty much Wei's body and soul doing most of the exertion. I share some of it with him, but he takes the brunt of the effort."

Understanding her explanation, they switched topics. "So what's so special about Wei's singing?" Soul asked.

Pearl smiled a bit. "Well," she began, "he always insists that his singing is really bad. And he honestly thinks that."

"But it's not?"

Pearl shook her head. "He has one of the best singing voices in existence. If he was a girl, I'd honestly think that he was one of the Muses reincarnate."

"What's his favorite stuff to sing?" Tsubaki asked.

"Love songs."

Everyone just stared at Pearl.

"What? Just because he hasn't had a girlfriend until now doesn't mean he can't appreciate love songs. He really likes the meaning behind the words."

"Any particular songs?" Soul asked.

Pearl simply pressed her finger to her mouth. "I'm not spoiling anything."

"Oh come on!"

She shrugged. "What? It's his choice whether or not he tells you which songs he likes in particular."

While they could all agree with that, they still wanted the specifics about Wei's songs of choice. Unfortunately for them, Pearl was not very forthcoming with information about Wei. Even to good friends, she didn't just reveal information that easily. Tsubaki was the one exception to this rule, seeing as Pearl thought she was perfect for Wei. But even then, she didn't get that much information about him.

"If you really want, I can try and get him to sing some time." Pearl said. "But I'd have to convince him first."

The ride continued on, with the car finally getting to the station. Even by this time, Wei still hadn't woken up, so Black*Star volunteered to shoulder him all the way onto the train, where they found a couple of surprises.

The first was the sign on the car to their seats, which said that the car was reserved for them. When they walked into the car, they noticed that it looked more like a small luxury hotel room than a car, with a couple of couches for a lounge area, as well as rooms to the side, which, when opened up, revealed beds with enough space for two per room, with there being five rooms total. Black*Star let Wei down on one of the couches.

"We have this entire car to ourselves? It looks really nice." Soul commented.

"First class with enough room for you guys to all sleep peacefully. It'll take up to a day and a half to reach the station in Washington, so you'll be staying here for a bit. This is actually our family's personal train car." Pearl said.

The entire gang turned to her. "Is your family really rich or something?" Soul asked.

Before Pearl could answer, Wen Da walked in. "Rich is somewhat overstating it. I prefer saying that we're very financially sound. Either way, have fun in the cart, stay safe, all that good stuff. Jade and I are going to stay in Death City for a little bit longer before we go home."

With that, he left.

As the train started moving, everyone settled into a couch before talking again.

"So is Wei going to wake up anytime soon?" Maka asked.

Pearl checked over her older brother really quickly, before realizing that he wasn't sleeping due to exhaustion anymore. "Give me a moment" she said, before preparing her finger. Next thing everyone knew, Wei had managed to launch up into the air, crash into the ceiling, and come falling back down onto a couch. Groaning, he got up before looking around.

Rubbing his head where he made impact with the ceiling, he turned to his sister. "Pearl, could you not do that again?"

Pearl looked somewhat sheepish when she replied. "I can only promise to try and resist."

He sighed. "That's probably the best I'll get from you."

Checking the clock, he noticed that it was about 10pm. Turning back to the group, he decided on a plan. "So before we do anything else, want to work on sleeping arrangements?"

After a quick discussion, they finally figured out how they were going to sleep. Black*Star and Soul were going to room together, while Liz and Patty would sleep in a different room. Kid would get a bed to himself to, as he put it, "preserve my symmetry", Maka and Tsubaki would take another room while Wei and Pearl would share the last one.

With that out of the way, the group started figuring out what to do while they waited. Thankfully enough, the car came with an assorted set of games under the table, ranging from chess to Monopoly (everyone agreed to stay far away from that game). Eventually, Soul, Pearl, Black*Star and Liz elected to play poker, Patty drew giraffes on a drawing board that she brought, while Kid obsessed himself with making symmetrical designs in Blockus. Maka and Wei decided to play chess while Tsubaki watched on, interested in what they were doing but not necessarily willing to participate.

After a few minutes into playing against Wei, Maka realized how outclassed she was. While she had always had a decently good grip on strategy from all the fights that she had been in, she was unable to match up to a master of the game.

"Do you really like playing chess?" Maka asked.

Wei shrugged. "I'll play it if other people want to learn. I used to play in tournaments before Pearl could start training as a meister, mostly because I found the game fun. It's not often that I find someone with an interest in the game nowadays."

"Is there anything you can't do well?" Maka asked, as she tried to stave off her defeat.

"Yep. Basketball, drawing, singing, and pretty much every single woodwind or brass instrument."

Maka raised an eyebrow. Pearl had mentioned something about this earlier when they were on the way to the station.

Wei noticed the look she was giving him. "What?"

"Your parents were saying something about how you were actually really good at singing."

Wei shook his head. "They would say that. I'm not that good at singing. If anything, I'm really bad at it."

Tsubaki cut in. "Could you maybe sing for us? Just this once?"

Everyone turned over to look at Wei, except for Kid, who was still obsessing over the different designs he could make.

Feeling all the stares on him, Wei still shook his head.

"Tell you what, how about once we get back from dealing with Mo Ye, I'll find a time to sing."

With that promise in their mind, they went back to what they were doing. As Wei and Maka continued playing chess, Maka couldn't help but wonder why the Zhao family had so much stuff in a train car. To her, it seemed way more than necessary for them. The gang had visited the place that Wei and Pearl were staying, and just from looking at the place, they could tell that Wei and Pearl preferred to live without that much fancy stuff in their apartment.

"So," Maka began. "Is there a reason why there's so many things stuffed into this car?"

Wei shrugged. "It's a multipurpose car. Our family might own it, but we do rent it to people for use when we're not using it. It also helps especially for people who can't sleep well on trains. By the way, you might not want to do that."

Maka looked down back on the board to realize all of a sudden that she was in danger of being checkmated.

After a few more moments where Maka narrowly avoided checkmates before finally falling, Wei pointed out a bookshelf to her, stacked with books of all genre. Excited by the amount of material to read, she dug into the books right away. In the meantime, Wei took the opportunity to stretch before walking over to the poker group where Black*Star was handily getting destroyed.

"DAMMIT HOW DO YOU GUYS WIN EVERY TIME?"

"You keep on yelling out stuff like 'My double will not lose' and stuff like that. How can you not expect us to take advantage of that?" Soul asked.

"A GOD PROCLAIMS HIS PLANS FOR ALL TO BE ENLIGHTENED."

"You know, I still find it hard to believe that you deal with this almost every single day." Wei muttered to Tsubaki.

Tsubaki scratched the back of her head. "I don't mind that much. He's actually a pretty nice person."

"Minus all the times where he tries to proclaim himself as a god, annoy me and Pearl, and other stuff like trying to peep on you when you take a bath." Wei muttered.

Tsubaki blushed. "You know about that?" She had barely mentioned it when Wei had asked more about Black*Star and why they were partners a couple of months back. Wei hadn't pressed for any of the specific details.

"What can I say? I remember details way too well." Wei said. "I always try to remember every moment. They're all precious to me. Especially the ones we've spent together."

Tsubaki didn't know how to respond to that. What she did know though, was that there was a bundle of joy swelling up inside her heart from the words Wei just said. Not knowing what to say, she decided on kissing him.

Wei, who wasn't expecting the kiss, fell back into a couch with Tsubaki on top of him. He deepened the kiss though, allowing the two of them to really feel their moment together. It had been almost too long since the last kiss like that and in a way, the two of them felt that this was reaffirming the relationship that they had with each other. The moment they broke off the kiss though, the two of them realized the position that they were in.

Needless to say, there was a bunch of blushing as Tsubaki got off of him and sat down next to him. Eventually, they settled for just holding hands, with Tsubaki snuggling up to him. Before the two of them knew it, they were out like lights.

—Line Break—

"Alright, I think we're done for tonight." Soul said as he stretched his arms.

"Yeah. This god needs his rest." Black*Star agreed.

As everyone went to their respective rooms, Pearl noticed something and got Maka's attention.

"How about you sleep in the same room as me tonight." She suggested.

Maka raised an eyebrow. "Why?" she asked.

Pearl simply pointed at what she had noticed earlier. Maka, followed the finger and found herself looking at Wei and Tsubaki asleep right next to each other.

"They probably need a blanket, so we'll use one of the bedroom's blankets for them." Pearl explained.

Maka nodded. That seemed like a good idea, until she noticed Pearl pulling out a camera.

"What are you doing?" Maka asked.

"Getting some blackmail on Wei." She replied. "And recording something for them to remember in the future. Precious moments and all that stuff."

Maka understood the second part of that. Memories were valuable. But the first part was somewhat confusing to her. "Blackmail?"

"Just in case he tries to get out of singing in front of everyone. Between Mom's teasing and singing in front of everyone, he'd take the singing. But that aside, grab the blanket, would you?" Pearl replied.

Still somewhat confused, Maka went to a room and grabbed a blanket. When she got back, she saw Pearl patiently waiting for her. They draped the blanket on top of Wei and Tsubaki, and went off to their room. A few minutes later, everyone on the car was asleep.

/

**Man my update frequency just tanked. I keep on thinking of the most random things to put in and then avoid putting them in because I'm not sure how well it would fit in. Other than that, I don't know why I'm slowing down. I have the whole plot thing pretty much figured out, I just need to execute it.**

**So I'm thinking of doing sides stories to this fanfic. **

**And I've got another idea for a completely different fanfic. X-Over, which includes Rise of the Guardians and… Deemo. (You can all breathe now. It's not another Frozen/Rise of the Guardians Jelsa fanfic). Whether or not I go through with it has yet to be seen.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Welp, here we go with another chapter.**

Tsubaki stirred slightly, not sure as to where she was. The only thing she could tell was that she was lying on her side with a blanket on top of her. From what she could feel, she figured that she was sleeping on a couch. Which was somewhat weird, seeing as she was supposed to be sleeping in the same room as Maka during the trip. Before her sleepy brain could figure anything else out, she felt a light poke on her cheek.

A moment later, she opened her eyes to see that she was using Wei's leg as a pillow. Which was kind of embarrassing when she looked back on it later, but for the moment it felt right.

"Sleep well?" Wei asked.

Tsubaki moved to sit up, before cuddling herself against him. "I slept really well."

They cuddled there for a few more moments before Wei handed her a plate with some breakfast on it.

Tsubaki took the plate before thanking Wei. As she put the first egg into her mouth, Tsubaki noticed that Wei was sketching out something on a map.

"What are you working on?" she asked.

"It's a map with a plan of where we're going to search." Wei said. "Suzhou is a pretty big city, so I'm splitting the map into parts where it's more likely that we'll find the Gan Jiang sword than not."

"Any good ideas?" she asked.

Wei thought for a moment. "Well, there's a historical museum. I doubt we'll find the sword there, but it's a good place to start looking for information. We could try looking through family records, see if anyone knows anything about descendants and all that stuff."

Tsubaki paused for a moment. "That seems like a good idea." Looking around, she suddenly realized that they were in the car by themselves.

"Where's everyone else?" She asked.

Wei shrugged. "Probably in the dining car still, eating breakfast. I just went over there to grab you a plate before coming back here. You slept for a while. Have you not slept that much recently?" He asked.

Tsubaki thought for a moment. "Well, it is a bit tough to get a really good sleep when Black*Star snores. And I think the mission I got back from drained me a bit. "

Wei thought for a moment. "Tell you what, how about you get some more rest?" He kissed her on the forehead. "I'll wake you up later before everyone gets back, ok?"

Nodding in agreement, cuddled even more into Wei before she fell asleep again.

—Line Break—

Later, when Tsubaki had woken up again and everyone had gathered together, Wei went over the general idea of what was going to happen when they got to China.

"Once we get to China, we'll spend a couple hours getting to the house that our family has there. Once we're there, we can unpack our stuff and stay the night. Next day, we'll go over to Suzhou and start our information digging. We'll split into two groups. Tsubaki, Black*Star, Pearl and I will form one group, while Kid, Liz, Patty, Maka and Soul will form the other. Any questions so far?"

Soul asked one. "How are we splitting the search when we get to the city?"

"There's a museum in the city with a lot on ancient Chinese history in the city. Your group will start the search there. Our group is going to ask around about any of the local urban legends that may have popped up. They may be related to the sword in some way or another."

Maka was curious. "How did you come to that plan?"

Wei went somewhat red in the face. "Umm, the museum has English translation over there. I figured since you guys didn't speak Chinese it would be easier for you to start your search there."

Despite understanding the implication of what Wei said, Maka wasn't really that bothered by it, and they went on. "Anything we should expect in Suzhou?" she asked.

Wei nodded. "Expect Mo Ye's minions anywhere. She spent years mastering the art of weapon creation, and every single weapon that she has made is deathly loyal to her. They would go so far as to even slit their own throats if she asked them to. I doubt she would though. She's also pretty fond of her creations. Somewhat like Medusa."

Everyone shuddered. They knew how possessive Medusa could be about her things, especially when she was responsible for its creation. This applied doubly to her snakes and Crona, who, while frequently abused by Medusa, was still a very valuable lab rat to her, so to speak.

"Welp," Wei said, closing the map. "That about covers everything that we'll be doing when we go to China. Any more questions?"

Seeing none, he continued. "Alright, we still have about five hours before we arrive at the airport. Go ahead and do what you want, just don't destroy the car."

With that, everyone dispersed.

—Line Break—

_5 hours later_

"Umm, Pearl, why is Wei fidgeting?" Soul asked.

Pearl sighed. "It's his least favorite part of any trip. Wei gets super airsick when he's on an airplane."

Everyone who heard Pearl looked at her in askance, except for Tsubaki who was with Wei at a shop helping him to get medicine to deal with airsickness.

"We don't know why, but it's just planes. He is fine with literally any other form of air transportation. It's part of why we only took a total of two plane flights when we travelled all the way around the world. All the other travelling that we did was through all other forms of transportation." She explained.

They continued walking once Wei and Tsubaki had finished shopping for the medicine.

The gang had finally gotten off the train, which had stopped at the airport. They had checked their bags in for the flight, and were now taking their time walking to their gate, where Wei was slowly but surely dreading his inevitable episode of airsickness. He came prepared this time though, with twenty paper bags for the worst case scenarios, as well three boxes of motion sickness medicine. While everyone else (except Pearl) thought he was somewhat paranoid for bringing that much stuff, Wei remained adamant about the fact that the amount he had was just sufficient for the worst case scenario, which he always preferred to prepare for.

When they finally got to the plane, everyone sat down and went to do their own thing, except for Wei, who place the medicine and paper bags in the pouch in front of him and prepared for the worst.

_One plane ride later…_

"I can't believe you actually used every single paper bag." Soul said.

Wei, who was still being assisted by Tsubaki, grimaced. "I told you I prepared for the worst case scenario."

Soul raised his eyebrow. "How did you figure you would need twenty bags?"

"Past experience."

"Wha-"

"Don't ask." Pearl said. "It's not a pretty story."

Taking her word for it, Soul shut up. A moment later, Maka spotted something. "Is that our ride?" she asked.

Looking over to where Maka pointed, everyone saw another large car, with a woman in what appeared to be a business suit standing right in front of it. Seeing the group, the woman waved them over.

"Come here, come here. You don't want to take even longer now, do you?" the woman said.

Pearl sighed. "Emily, we're on time. You're being impatient. Just help us get our stuff in."

A few moments later, everyone was in the car, with Wei asleep by a window. Maka sat at the front.

"So um, Miss Emily?" Maka asked.

"Just call me Emily, dear."

"Oh, ok. What's your relationship to the Zhao family? I keep getting this feeling that the Zhao family has members almost everywhere."

Emily chuckled. "I'm actually just a maid for the Zhao family."

Kid, who was sitting right behind them, was confused. "That doesn't really explain the suit."

"It's for when I go out on matters for the Zhao family. Madam Ro does prefer that I keep things professional when I represent the Zhao family."

"So we're going to her house then?" Maka guessed.

Emily nodded. "She's actually really ecstatic about it. It's been a while since Wei and Pearl last visited. The children love it when they visit."

"The children?"

"You'll see."

Eventually, they reached the house. Well, mansion. The Chinese-style home was large, with multiple different buildings and pathways between them, covered in case it rained. Each of the buildings had the traditional corner-up quality that many traditional roofs had, as well as a point at the top of each building. Aside from that, the pathways were all paved stone, with roofs above them that matched the design of the buildings. Farther down the property, there was a small shrine, which held the names of every single deceased member of the Zhao family. The only thing that seemed out of place in this ensemble of buildings were the tennis courts.

As the car pulled into a driveway, two children, a boy and a girl, ran towards it, followed by a slender woman.

"Emily da jie!" the girl exclaimed.

As Emily walked out of the car, she smiled. The kids here were always some of the most adorable.

"Ling Ling, wait a moment." She said.

Ling Ling looked confused for a moment, before she saw a few strangers walking out of the bus. Her brother, Ming, who had heard earlier from his mother who was coming, understood. The first one was a sandy blonde girl with her hair in pigtails. The next one, a guy with stripes in his hair. After that guy followed a loud-mouthed guy with blue hair. Ling Ling took a disliking to him right away. The next person after the loud-mouthed guy was a weird person with white hair and red eyes. Seeing the red eyes, Ling Ling hid behind Emily, somewhat scared, before Emily put a reassuring hand on her head. Right after the white-haired guy walked out, a pair of girls walked right him, both wearing the same white jacket and red shirt. Behind them followed another girl, this one with her hair in a ponytail. Ling Ling took a liking to her almost right away.

The last people to get out of the car though, had Ling Ling running right towards them, as it had felt like forever since they were last here. Her brother followed right behind her.

"Wei ge ge! Pearl jie jie!"

Seeing the two children, the Zhao siblings bent down and reached their arms out to the two children running towards them. Ling Ling ran right into Wei's arms, who smiled before picking her up. The moment he picked her up, he proceeded to tickle her.

Ming on the other hand, after giving Pearl as giant of a hug as his little body could muster, climbed onto Pearl's back, so she could give him a piggy-back ride.

Chuckling, Wei turned towards the slender woman who had followed the children. "Quite the welcome party you've set up, Aunt Ro."

Ro smiled. "What can I say? It's been forever since you and Pearl have been here. Do you want to introduce us to your friends?"

Wei suddenly remembered everyone else that was there. Pearl sighed. Wei often got really distracted playing with Ling Ling.

"Alright, so introducing in order, that's Maka, a scythe meister, Death the Kid, a gun meister and shinigami, Black*Star, a loud-mouthed guy who wants to-"

"I'M GOING TO SURPASS GO-"

BAM! Everyone just stood shocked as Ro suddenly closed the gap between herself and Black*Star and knocked him unconscious with a giant chop to the head.

"I don't like people being too loud. Continue, Pearl."

Kid leaned over to Maka and muttered in her ear. "I think she just stole your trademark."

Maka simply nodded, awestruck by the power behind that chop.

Holding back a bit of laughter, Pearl continued. "So that next person is Soul, he's a Death Scythe and a really nice guy. Those two over there are Liz and Patty, they can turn into guns. That last one is Tsubaki. A multi-form weapon… and Wei's girlfriend."

Four pairs of eyes suddenly turned to look at Wei, including the pair held by the child in his arms. Wei knew what was going to happen the next moment.

"Wei ge ge has a girlfriend?"

"Since when?"

"Why did your father not tell me?"

"Girlfriend? What's that?" Ling Ling asked.

_Really Pearl? Again? Just as we visit our family again?_

—Line Break—

Suffice to say, there were more embarrassing moments, as Wei was once again drilled by questions from his family regarding his relationship with Tsubaki. Once that was out of the way, everyone got settled in at the location, finding some rooms to sleep.

Wei was still holding Ling Ling, who was playing with his necklace, when he approached Ro.

"Aunt Ro, what time is the festival happening?" Wei asked.

Ro looked at his nephew, somewhat confused. "The festival isn't for another two days."

Upon hearing those words, Wei's jaw dropped. "Y-you mean I made a mistake?" he said, utterly horrified that he would make such a mistake in his planning.

Ro facepalmed. "Have you looked at a calendar recently?"

Wei blushed. "Umm, I might have been a tad bit occupied?"

"A bit occupied, huh?"

A small pause passed between the two Zhao family members as Wei realized exactly what he said.

"OH GOD. I swear Aunt Ro, that's not what I meant. I haven't been distracted like that, have I?" Wei asked.

Ro shrugged. "You tell me. You're the one in the relationship, not me. By the way, Ling Ling's trying to get your attention."

"What do you- oh."

Ro's daughter was about to smash her arm, which was currently a mallet, into Wei's head.

"Ling Ling, just because Aunt Ro hits people doesn't mean you should be hitting people also." Wei scolded.

Ling Ling turned her arm back to normal before pointing at the playground. "Play?" she asked.

Wei smiled. "Sure. Let's go."

—Line Break—

Maka walked around the Zhao estate. Things had been confusing for her at first, seeing as from what she had heard, the Zhao family started out as humble commoners in the period of dynasties in China. After a conversation from Wei's Aunt Ro, who explained to her how sometime during the Han Dynasty, the Zhao family did really well for themselves economically. Really, really well.

As she was thinking about this stuff, she heard sounds coming from across the property. Trying to figure out what it was, she walked over to see Pearl playing tennis with Soul, in what was clearly becoming a very one-sided battle, with Soul being on the receiving end of Pearl's well-aimed shots.

"Hmm. Pearl's form could still use some work."

With a startled glance, Maka saw that Wei was right next to him, carrying a sleeping Ling Ling.

"When did you get here?" she asked.

Wei shrugged. "About five seconds ago. I heard the sounds of the court, so I came over to see who was hitting. Should've figured it was Pearl."

Maka was curious. "So who's better? You or her?"

Wei shrugged again. "Not sure. It's been a while since I last played."

Walking onto the court, Wei called out to his sister. "Angle your racket better for that shot."

After hitting that shot, Pearl stopped to see Maka and her brother watching her play.

"What are you two doing here?" she asked.

"I heard something coming from this direction. I was curious. Do you two play a lot of sports?" Maka asked.

Pearl shrugged ("I swear, those two shrug almost all the time" Maka thought.) "I just play tennis and basketball. You should see Wei play racket sports in general though."

Maka raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Walking over to Maka, Pearl whispered in her ear. "Racket sports are his forte."

"Pearl, you do know I can hear everything, right?" Wei asked.

Giving her older brother a smile, Pearl just walked off the court and sat down on the bench beside Wei, before taking Ling Ling from his arms.

Wei sighed. "Fine. Come on Maka. And tell you what, Soul you come also. You can play two against one."

The weapon-meister team looked at Wei incredulously before dropping the expression. At this point, they figured that the Zhao siblings were just going to put themselves up for the biggest challenge possible. Thankfully enough, they at least had the skill to back up their claims.

As Maka and Soul got themselves set up, Soul asked a question. "Any handicaps for you?"

Wei nodded. "I'm stuck to aiming at the singles lines, you guys can aim anywhere on the doubles lines."

By Maka's calculation, that would give Wei more space he had to cover and less to aim to.

As they got ready, Maka and Soul couldn't help but feel that they had to take this match as seriously as possible for a game of tennis.

/

**I often feel that I showcase Pearl by herself really often but don't showcase Wei by himself that often. Thus, the upcoming chapter. The older Zhao sibling needs an opportunity to shine.**

**We'll get to the juicy bit of the story soon enough. Be patient my dears.**


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Many things still to be done. Welp, let's see how I do.**

Maka got prepped up to receive Wei's serve after changing into more suitable clothes for the game. As she watched, Wei simply stood still for a moment before throwing the ball in the air. The next thing she knew, the ball had landed in the corner of the service box and hit the back wall. She blinked. She had seen fast before, having witnessed the craziness that was Black*Star and Tsubaki's combo when they fought Asura, but seeing this kind of speed again was amazing, to say the least. The moment the next shot flew right past Soul, she had a feeling that they wouldn't score a single point this entire match. Seeing as she and Soul didn't actively play/practice tennis, she figured that Wei would outclass them. She just didn't know how much.

After landing two more aces in a row, Wei stopped for a second. "Do you want me to go slower with the shots?" he asked.

Both weapon and meister shook their heads. "Keep them coming. This will help with reaction time." Maka said. A little extra training like this couldn't hurt that much, after all, could it?

Wei nodded in agreement. "By the way, you're serving now." He said.

Realizing this, Maka got ready to serve. As she hit the first ball though, Wei didn't ever bother to return it. Confused, Maka raised an eyebrow at him.

"If you want to practice reaction time, it might be better for you and Soul to just practice blocking high-speed shots from me and Pearl." Wei said. "Soul, you transform."

After Soul transformed and Maka grabbed hold of him, Wei set himself up again.

Maka focused as much as she could.

_Wei's shots are really fast, but it still doesn't match Black*Star and Tsubaki's speed. If I focus, I should be able to intercept the ball just before it goes right past me. _

As Wei served the first ball at her, Maka perceived it just in time to block it a couple of feet away from her body.

Wei raised his eyebrow in surprise. "Not bad." He complimented. "Let's try upping the speed a bit."

The next shot Wei hit blazed by Maka so fast that she didn't have time to react. To say the least, Maka was shocked.

"That's a bit?" she asked.

Wei shrugged. "I can still double my speed on my serve." He said.

As he was about to serve the next one, his sister stopped him.

"Wei, let me give some advice to Maka real fast." Pearl said.

Stopping his motion, Wei nodded and proceeded to sit on a bench.

Going over to Maka, Pearl explained the best way to perceive the ball. "The trick isn't to try and perceive the shot itself. You need to understand where the ball is going to be based off how he hits it and adjust Soul accordingly."

Maka frowned. "That's a lot of calculation to do all at once."

Pearl let out a small laugh. "Maybe, but if anyone can do that kind of calculation on the fly, you can."

Turning to her older brother, she told him "you can go back to serving now."

Getting up, Wei set up his service stance again. The next ball he hit flew right past Maka without giving her a chance to respond.

"Ok, that's a little too fast. Try resonating first." Wei said. "It'll help you react faster."

Following Wei's advice, Maka and Soul began resonating. As the two of them resonated, they could feel their wavelengths meshing together once again, as Maka's senses took to greater heights, something that was unfamiliar to them before.

After they resonated, Wei set up serve again, feeling that they could do better now.

As the ball flew at them once again, Maka's eyes seemed to almost trail the ball before she swung at it, knocking it out of the air. Wei continued serving more balls at them with increasing speed, with Maka spinning Soul around to keep every single ball from getting past her.

Seeing this increase in ability, Wei went over to the cart he was grabbing balls from. Maka's eyes widened when she saw his hand.

"Five balls at once?" she asked.

Wei nodded. "You were returning all of them, so I figured that returning multiple at once would be better."

Feeling the challenge, Maka warily set herself up again. If Maka thought the speed of the balls was going to decrease when Wei hit more at a time, she was very much wrong. Almost freaking out for a second, she barely managed to intercept the shots, and ended up letting a ball through her defense. While her blocking wasn't exactly on point this time, Wei considered it a passing grade in his book, seeing as none of the balls actually hit her.

"Well," Wei said, "that went much better. You want to switch on to a different training? We're going to be here for two days."

Maka raised an eyebrow, somewhat confused by his statement. "Sure, but I was wondering. Whatever happened to going to the city after we got to your aunt's house."

Wei frowned. "Normally, we'd be going later today, but my aunt Ro told me that the time for the festival, when we're doing our search, is in two days. Not today."

"Festival?" Maka asked.

Wei explained. "There's a festival that usually goes on around this time. Almost every single person in the city is out on the streets, so it's easier to both explore the museum and find information from the locals.

Transforming back, Soul frowned. "How did you mess up the date by two days?"

What they didn't expect at that moment was for Wei to sulk in a corner. It was almost like one of Kid's symmetry fits. As the sweatdrops appeared on Maka and Soul, Pearl walked over to her older brother, with Ling Ling, who was now awake, tailing right behind. Right before Pearl was about to reach Wei, she ushered Ling Ling forward. Ling Ling tried to get Wei's attention by poking him. Despite the poking, Wei continued to sulk. A moment later, it was quite apparent that Ling Ling took after her mother, when everyone was shocked to see Ling Ling smash her transformed arm into Wei's head.

"… ow."

Soul walked over. "Man, that looks brutal. Does Ling Ling always do that?"

Pearl thought for a moment. "I think aunt Ro may have been the inspiration for this new habit of hers. I'm more surprised at the fact that Ling Ling can transform when she's this young."

Once again, scythe duo was confused, so Pearl proceeded to once again explain things. "You know how the abilities Wei and I have are hereditary?"

Maka and Soul nodded. They remembered that much from back when they first met each other.

"The rest of our family are mostly just weapons. They usually start learning to transform when they're around six to eight years old. Wei transformed when he was two or three." She said.

"Yes, and apparently it was quite the moment for him." Another voice said. Everyone turned to see Ro walking down.

"Mama!" Ling Ling cried happily as she ran into her arms.

Ro smiled. "Where have you been? It's almost your naptime."

Ling Ling looked confused. "Nap?"

Ro nodded before turning to her niece and nephew, who was now conscious again. "Wei, Pearl, could you both make sure Ling Ling gets to bed now?"

Following their aunt's orders, Wei and Pearl took Ling Ling and went over to the main house where the family slept.

Maka spoke. "What do you mean when you say it was quite the moment for him?" she asked Ro.

Ro smiled. "Well, I wasn't there when it happened, but apparently Wei was sad because he wasn't able to transform when he was two. It was rather devastating for him."

Soul was confused. "But most people only discover their weapon forms when they focus really hard on it. And even then that only happens when they're at least six years old. Why would he want to transform that early?"

"Because every single heir to the bloodline's power has been able to at that age." Ro said. "So when Wei wasn't able to do it, he was completely devastated."

This led to another question. "Why couldn't transform at that—"

Suddenly the scythe duo understood why he couldn't. "His weapon absorb ability." Maka said.

Ro nodded. "Wei's weapon absorb ability is quite literally a weapon absorb ability. He couldn't transform because he didn't start out with any weapon forms. Wen Da discovered this when he tried to see if Wei had skills as a meister."

Something still didn't add up for Maka. "But why was he devastated if there was a chance that he would be the meister?"

Ro looked at her right in the eye. "Your partner here should know the answer to that."

Soul breathed in, understanding. It was almost the exact same attitude that he had with Maka. "He wanted to be able to protect his sister. And as weapons, our duty is to protect our meisters. That's why he was devastated."

Ro simply nodded.

Something else was bothering Maka though. "There has to be something else though."

"Oh?" Ro raised an eyebrow.

"There has to be something else that makes them so strong." Maka said. "I can't imagine that your family's abilities that are passed on just randomly occurred. There has to be something that makes them this powerful."

Ro smiled. _She's smart._

"You're absolutely right, dear. While we do have some extra power due to our ancestry, that's not the biggest source of our power."

"Then what is it?" Soul asked, curious as well.

Instead of answering them directly, Ro tilted her head and smiled. "That's a story for later. For right now, you might want to go in. Wei and Pearl are going to cook later, and you probably know by now that their cooking is really good. I swear, those two do almost everything together."

Somewhat disappointed by the lack of answers, Maka and Soul walked to the building where everyone else was hanging out. Ro sat down on a bench and leaned back, smiling.

_If only they looked at a story book, they could figure out the secret in almost an instant. But then again, they might find it too corny. Oh well. _

/

**So a quick explanation for the ages I just used for weapon transformation:**

**The youngest weapons I've seen in Soul Eater are the Pots of Fire and Thunder. Seeing as I can't find any info on their exact ages, I just used as good of an assumption as I could for the youngest age for transforming in the SE universe.**

**Other than that, sorry for taking so long to update. College has been busy, I've been lazy, all that good stuff. **


End file.
